Introduction to XRPL EVM Sidechain
The XRPL EVM compatible sidechain implementation is a proof of concept extension to the XRP Ledger protocol and is for development purposes only. There is no official amendment currently and it is not available on the production Mainnet. The EVM compatible sidechain bridge is connected to the XRP Ledger Devnet. Do not send transactions in Mainnet.
The XRP Ledger Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain is a fast and secure blockchain that brings web3 applications to the XRP Ledger community.
- Explorer: https://evm-sidechain.xrpl.org
- Public RPC: https://rpc-evm-sidechain.xrpl.org
- Bridge UI: https://bridge.devnet.xrpl.org
Some highlights of the XRPL EVM sidechain include:
- Support for 1000 transactions per second, enabling large loads and throughput.
- Low transaction confirmation times, producing a block every 5 seconds.
- 1 block finalization time; once a block is added to the chain and confirmed, it's considered final.
- Full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, enabling you to connect your wallet and interact with or deploy smart contracts written in Solidity.
Consensus
The XRPL EVM sidechain runs on a proof of authority (PoA) consensus algorithm. Proof of authority gives a designated number of blockchain actors the power to:
- Validate transactions or interactions on the network.
- Update the network's registry.
- Add new validators to the network.
Validating machines on the network are then responsible for generating new blocks of transactions to include on the blockchain. Unlike the XRPL, transaction fees on the XRPL EVM sidechain aren't burned; instead, transaction fees are distributed equally among validators.
The underlying technology for the XRPL sidechain consensus is CometBFT, a fork of Tendermint, which is a Byzantine fault tolerant engine for building blockchains.
The blockchain uses the cosmos-sdk library on top of CometBFT to create and customize the blockchain using its built-in modules. The XRPL EVM sidechain uses the Ethermint cosmos-sdk module to provides EVM compatibility.
If you are interested in running your own node, please see: Join the XRPL EVM Sidechain Devnet.
Interoperability Using the XRPL EVM Sidechain
The XRPL EVM sidechain is directly connected to XRP Ledger through the XRPL bridge https://bridge.devnet.xrpl. Through this bridge, you can connect to the XRPL EVM Sidechain and use its features.