Ripple CTO David Schwartz Admits Delay in Smart Contract Development on XRP Ledger

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Derived from The Crypto Basic, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, stated during a recent X Spaces session that the company should have prioritized native smart contract capabilities on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) much earlier. He explained that Ripple’s initial skepticism toward smart contracts delayed their development at the Layer-1 level, which in turn slowed innovation in the XRPL ecosystem. The XRP Ledger, launched in 2012, was originally designed for payments and not for programmable applications. While Ethereum popularized smart contracts in 2015, Ripple remained hesitant, believing the feature had to be perfect before implementation. Schwartz acknowledged that developers currently face limitations in building on XRPL, as they must either propose new features for community approval or focus on wallets and front-end apps. He emphasized that even basic smart contract functionality could have enabled developers to create unique on-chain features and custom business logic. Although XRPL’s Automated Market Maker (AMM) is a strong feature, Schwartz noted that its impact is limited without smart contracts. Ripple has since begun exploring smart contract capabilities, with the feature recently deployed on XRPL’s AlphaNet for testing ahead of a mainnet rollout.

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