Ripple has asked the XRP Ledger community to retire XLS-38, a proposed native cross-chain bridge amendment that never activated on the network. RippleX engineer David Fuelling published the formal recommendation on August 27, 2026, citing low developer demand and the availability of alternative solutions.
XLS-38 was designed to enable assets to move between XRPL mainnet and custom sidechains through a decentralized network of witness servers. Its primary intended use was bridging XRP to the XRPL EVM Sidechain as a native gas token.
In June 2024, Ripple selected Axelar as the production bridge for XRPL–EVM interoperability, citing Axelar's 75+ validators and experience across 55+ connected blockchains. Following that decision, Ripple's own UNL validator switched its vote to "No" on XLS-38.
The community was given 12–15 months to demonstrate demand for private-sidechain use cases requiring the native bridge. According to Fuelling's post, only approximately 4–5 of the 35 UNL validators, or roughly 11–14%, were voting "Yes." The activation threshold requires 80% support for 14 consecutive days, a target never approached.
Mayukha Vadari, an XLS-38 co-author at RippleX, confirmed that the amendment never existed on any production network. Axelar has operated the XRPL EVM bridge live for over a year without issue.
Ripple estimates that withdrawing XLS-38 would remove more than 10,000 lines of code from the xrpld codebase. The company's engineering focus has shifted to institutional-grade features, including privacy enhancements, tokenization upgrades, and work on a lending protocol and single-asset vault.
The withdrawal process involves three stages: marking XChainBridge as obsolete in the xrpld repository, allowing validators that upgrade to automatically stop voting for the amendment, and eventually deleting the code once no active validator supports it. Ripple stated it would reconsider the recommendation if any team presented an active build specifically requiring a native XLS-38 bridge.
For EVM Sidechain users, Axelar remains the designated bridge between the sidechain and XRPL mainnet. No mainnet assets are locked in XLS-38, and the amendment's retirement does not affect existing bridge functionality.
