Ripple has proposed withdrawing XLS-38, the XRPL amendment that would have added a native cross-chain bridge known as XChainBridge, and using Axelar instead for connections between XRPL and other blockchains.

The company presented the move as a practical shift rather than a final decision. Ripple said Axelar is already the bridge provider for the XRPL EVM Sidechain and argued that, after more than a year, no meaningful demand had emerged for XLS-38. Any change would still depend on the wider validator community, since Ripple holds only one validator vote.

What XLS-38 was designed to add

XLS-38 was intended to give XRPL its own built-in way to move assets across chains without relying on an external provider. The design used a set of witness servers that would monitor activity on connected networks and attest that transfers had taken place correctly.

According to the proposal, that structure was meant to support links to private chains and permissioned networks, and could eventually have been used to connect the XRPL EVM Sidechain back to XRPL mainnet. In that sense, the amendment aimed to keep bridging functionality native to the XRPL stack.

Why Ripple says Axelar is the better option

Ripple said it moved away from XLS-38 when the EVM Sidechain launched and selected Axelar to handle the bridge instead. The company argued that the witness-server model creates a difficult trade-off: a broader, more decentralized operator set can improve security, but also makes coordination and governance more complex.

It also said cross-chain bridges are specialized infrastructure and that Ripple did not view itself as having the right expertise to operate that kind of system safely at scale. By contrast, Ripple pointed to Axelar's existing network, which it said has more than 75 validators and supports connections across more than 55 blockchains.

Security trade-offs and dependency concerns

Ripple's case for retiring the amendment centered partly on risk reduction. It said keeping unused bridging code inside XRPL mainnet increases the attack surface, and estimated that removing XLS-38 would eventually eliminate more than 10,000 lines of inactive code.

At the same time, the proposal does not frame Axelar as a perfect replacement in every respect. XLS-38 was conceived as a native XRPL feature, while Axelar is a separate network. Relying on it would mean trusting external validators and outside technology rather than infrastructure embedded directly within XRPL. Ripple's argument is that this trade-off is preferable to maintaining a bridge design that has seen no real adoption.

What the validator process looks like next

Ripple said its position is only a recommendation and not a binding outcome. Any withdrawal of XLS-38 would require agreement from XRPL validators, and Ripple emphasized that it controls just one vote in that process.

If the community supports the proposal, the amendment would first be marked inactive. Support for it would then fade as validators update their software, with the code ultimately removed in a later stage. The next confirmed step, for now, is whether validators choose to back Ripple's recommendation to retire the dormant feature.

Source: Coin Edition