Why Ripple is funding a bridge to Ethereum's DeFi market

XRP and ETH, two of the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, could soon be linked and interoperable.

An initiative to build a bridge between Ripple and Ethereum launched at ETHDenver last weekend. It was funded by Xpring, Ripple’s development arm.

Warren Paul Anderson, senior product manager at Ripple, explained the reasons behind the initiative in a blog post published today. Clearly, the huge possibilities offered by Ethereum’s lucrative market for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) are not lost on Ripple.

“We think the XRP to ETH and ERC-20 tokens bridge is important since XRP is one of the most liquid crypto currencies in the world, but doesn’t have a compute layer to support complex smart contracts for the growing Decentralized Finance (DeFi) market on Ethereum,” he said.

Xpring: an open platform for open source software 

Last weekend, developers at ETH Denver were set the challenge of connecting the two cryptocurrencies on Ripple’s Interledger (ILP), its protocol for connecting blockchains. The project will continue on development site Gitcoin until the end of next week. 

Ripple is referred to by Investopedia as a permissioned blockchain, a tag which its large community hotly disputes. Nevertheless, building bridges with Ripple won’t suit everyone in the Ethereum community, where many prioritise decentralization. However, one school of thought holds that Ripple’s ultra-fast transaction speeds would offer the scalability solution Ethereum is desperate for. 

Anderson sought to address developers’ qualms via his blog. “Interoperability can be a solution to tribalism,” he said. 

He added that Ethereum’s ambition to attract one million developers would be enhanced by pooling effort and resources, and working together where appropriate.

Bridging XRP with ETH is not the extent of Ripple’s ambitions. Since it launched in May 2018, Xpring has pumped $500 million in XRP into the industry at large, in an effort to boost adoption with interoperability.