Ripple Recommends Withdrawing XRPL XChainBridge Amendment

Ripple has advised the XRP Ledger (XRPL) community to withdraw the pending XChainBridge (XLS‑38) amendment. The recommendation follows Ripple’s assessment that the bridge’s primary use case is now fully covered by Axelar and that developer interest has not materialised.

Why the amendment is considered redundant

The XChainBridge proposal was intended to enable native asset transfers between XRPL and connected ledgers using independent witness servers. Its flagship use case was linking XRPL to an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain. In June 2025, Ripple selected Axelar as the bridge for the XRPL EVM sidechain, effectively replacing the role envisioned for XChainBridge.

Developer demand and maintenance burden

Ripple observed little evidence of active projects requiring the native bridge. No production deployment has publicly identified XLS‑38 as essential. Maintaining an unused implementation requires ongoing code reviews, testing, and compatibility work whenever xrpld (the XRPL server software) is updated. Ripple estimates that withdrawing the amendment could remove more than 10,000 lines of code from xrpld.

Withdrawal process and validator dynamics

The amendment is currently listed as pending with a default “no” vote. Ripple controls a single validator vote out of 35 total validators. Activation of any amendment requires support from over 80% of validators for two consecutive weeks, meaning at least 29 affirmative votes. Ripple’s recommendation does not force an immediate withdrawal; instead, it proposes a staged software change. A pull request marking XChainBridge as obsolete would cause servers that adopt the update to vote against activation, gradually reducing support as validators upgrade.

Community involvement

Developers with active XLS‑38 projects are invited to present evidence of their use cases before the community finalises the withdrawal. A credible deployment could lead Ripple to reconsider its stance.

Alternative interoperability solutions

Ripple highlighted other cross‑chain approaches such as Axelar, Wormhole, zero‑knowledge systems and layer‑2 designs, noting that bridge exploits have caused over $4 billion in losses since 2021. These alternatives address varying security and privacy requirements.