Does Ethereum’s sidechain ‘threaten’ XRP Ledger?

• XRPL’s department head mentioned that the EVM has not achieved much.
• On-chain data revealed the ledger was busy and users were active.

XRP Ledger’s (XRPL) head of compliance Thomas Silkjær has said that the Ethereum [ETH] Virtual Machine (EVM) was the biggest attack on the protocol.

Silkjær gave this opinion while responding to a post that XRP has not been put to use on 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 contracts development, and cross-border payments.

According to Silkjær, XRP locked on the EVM sidechain was not different from XRP wrapped in another chain.

“The integration is not paying off”

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 utility.

In my personal opinion, the EVM sidechain is the single biggest direct attack on the XRPL protocol, pushed by those that should be defending and working for the protocol.

It does nothing for rippled. It does nothing that makes the XRPL more attractive to new devs. It has little…

— Thomas Silkjær (@Silkjaer) February 10, 2024

Ripple, through its developer arm RippleX, began testing EVM-compatible side chain in October 2022. Since then, the side chain has been helping users operate on Ethereum by bridging 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 view was a personal one and not necessarily shared by Ripple’s development team. To back up his argument, he wrote,

“The attack is not that you can bridge to an EVM chain, because you already can. It is the fact that it’s being pushed with marketing that makes it sound like it’s “the XRPL”. The XRPL is being watered down by the entity that was supposed to protect it.”

Surprises appear on another end

This development might come as a surprise to the crypto community at large. One reason for this could be linked to RippleX’s statement in 2023.

According to the team, the EVM was supposed to make XRPL developer-friendly. The integration was also aimed at easing access to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) for XRP users.

But with the public statement from one of its insiders, it seems, XRPL has not been able to achieve that yet. Following the discourse, AMBCrypto evaluated what has happening on the XRPL on-chain.

According to our findings, the total number of XRP issued on the ledger has been increasing since December.

This increase suggests that transactions on the network have been increasing. Another metric we considered was the daily new amount of XRP trustlines created.

At press time, the number had increased 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 did not seem to align with what we discovered. But since ours was about users, it could be possible that the viewpoint referred to development activity.

If that’s the case, then Silkjær might have a point. But what we can’t conclude is if the EVM was the problem.