Ripple seeks withdrawal of XRPL bridge amendment

Ripple has recommended withdrawing the XRP Ledger’s pending XChainBridge amendment after concluding that its primary use case is already served by Axelar and broader developer demand has not emerged. Summary Ripple recommends withdrawing XChainBridge after Axelar replaced its intended XRP Ledger EVM Sidechain role entirely. The pending amendment would add native asset bridges using independent witness servers between connected ledgers. Removing XChainBridge could eliminate more than 10,000 lines from the XRPL server codebase, Ripple estimates. Ripple controls one validator vote and cannot withdraw or activate the amendment unilaterally today alone. Developers with active XLS-38 projects can present evidence before the community completes withdrawal procedures formally. Mayukha Vadari, a senior software engineer at RippleX, announced the recommendation on Aug. 27. XChainBridge, also known as XLS-38, remains in the XRPL validator voting process and has not activated on the mainnet. Ripple estimated that withdrawing the proposal would allow developers to remove more than 10,000 lines of code from xrpld, the server software that powers the network. No code has been removed yet, and Ripple cannot complete the process independently. Ripple is officially recommending the withdrawal of the XChainBridge amendment (XLS-38). With Axelar successfully handling the EVM Sidechain and a lack of broader developer demand, dropping XLS-38 will remove over 10,000 lines of inactive code. Read the full reasoning here 👇 https://t.co/9g8J2d5Ggi — Mayukha Vadari (@msvadari) August 27, 2026 You might also like: Ripple Prime launches Delta One service for US equity derivatives XRP Ledger no longer needs XLS-38 for its EVM sidechain XLS-38 was designed to provide a protocol-level framework for moving XRP and issued assets between the XRP Ledger and connected networks. Its intended users included public sidechains, private ledgers, permissioned networks and experimental chains. The system relies on independent witness servers to monitor events on each connected ledger. Witnesses submit attestations confirming that assets were locked or destroyed before corresponding assets become available on the destination network. One of the proposal’s main use cases was connecting the XRPL mainnet with its Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible sidechain. Ripple later selected Axelar to provide that connection instead. The XRPL EVM Sidechain launched with Axelar as its mainnet bridge in June 2025. Axelar’s validator network verifies cross-chain messages and connects the sidechain with XRPL and other supported blockchains. Ripple said the EVM sidechain is now “better addressed” through Axelar. That remains the company’s technical assessment rather than a finding reached through an independent security comparison. Weak developer demand changed Ripple’s assessment Ripple initially kept XLS-38 available because developers could still use it for private sidechains and specialized networks that Axelar was not designed to support. However, the company said it found little evidence of active projects requiring the native bridge. No production deployment has publicly identified XLS-38 as essential to its planned operations.