- XRPL’s department head said the EVM has not achieved much.
- Data from the chain showed that the ledger was busy and users were active.
Thomas Silkjær, head of compliance at XRP Ledger (XRPL), has said that the Ethereum [ETH] Virtual Machine (EVM) was the biggest attack on the protocol.
Silkjær expressed this opinion while responding to a post that XRP has not been used in the ledger. For the unfamiliar: XRP is the native token on Ripple.
XRPL, on the other hand, is the decentralized public blockchain that enables XRP transactions, smart contract development, and cross-border payments.
According to Silkjær, XRP locked on the EVM sidechain was no different than XRP wrapped on any other chain.
“The integration is not bearing fruit”
However, the head of analytics noted that the EVM sidechain does not help Ripple attract new developers. He also added that the sidechain does almost nothing for the XRPL in terms of usability.
In my personal opinion, the EVM sidechain is the largest direct attack on the XRPL protocol, pushed by those who should be defending and working for the protocol.
It does nothing for rippled. It does nothing to make the XRPL more attractive to new developers. It has little…
— Thomas Silkjær (@Silkjaer) February 10, 2024
Ripple, through its development arm RippleX, began testing EVM-compatible sidechain in October 2022. Since then, the sidechain has been helping users operate on Ethereum by bridging the gap through the XRPL.
But in this case, XRP is the native token and gas fees are collected in the token, while validators also get rewards in XRP.
However, Silkjær noted that his opinion was personal and not necessarily shared by Ripple’s development team. To substantiate his argument he wrote:
“The attack isn’t that you can bridge to an EVM chain, because you already can. It’s the fact that it’s being pushed by marketing that makes it sound like it’s “the XRPL.” The XRPL is being diluted by the entity that is supposed to protect it.”
Surprises appear at another end
This development could come as a surprise to the crypto community as a whole. One reason for this could be linked to RippleX’s 2023 statement.
According to the team, the EVM was supposed to make XRPL developer friendly. The integration also aimed at facilitating access to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) for XRP users.
But with the public statement from one of the insiders, it seems that XRPL has not yet been able to achieve that. After the argument, AMBCrypto evaluated what happened on the XRPL on-chain.
According to our findingsThe total amount of XRP issued on the ledger has increased since December.
This increase suggests that transactions on the network have increased. Another metric we considered was the daily number of new XRP trustlines created.
At the time of writing, the number had risen to 1526, indicating that the protocol was busy and users were active.
Source: Santiment
How much are 1,10,100 XRPs worth today?
As it stands, Silkjær’s opinion didn’t seem to align with what we discovered. But since ours was about users, it could be possible that the position was related to development activities.
If that’s the case, maybe Silkjær has a point. But what we can’t conclude is whether the EVM was the problem.