Ripple’s XRP Ledger has announced a new collaboration effort with Axelar, a programmable blockchain interoperability platform.
AXL price surged on Wednesday as Ripple will use Axelar as the exclusive bridge for its XRPL EVM sidechain. Per data from CoinMarketCap, AXL shot up from below key resistance at $0.76 as Bitcoin and the rest of the altcoin market reacted to US CPI data.
The token’s price reached highs of $0.81 and was up 6% at the time of writing.
The XRPL EVM sidechain
Ripple developers announced Axelar’s partnership for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible XRPL EVM Sidechain at XRPL Apex 2024.
The project eyes enhanced interoperability and new opportunities for the market across decentralized finance (DeFi) and real-world assets (RWAs).
XRPL EVM Sidechain will tap into Axelar to allow easy conversion of XRP into wrapped XRP (eXRP). This is what the platform plans to use as the native asset and for gas fees.
“The XRPL EVM sidechain is set to launch with Axelar as the exclusive bridge to source the native gas token of the sidechain (eXRP) from the XRPL,” Ripple wrote in a blog post.
Ripple’s team has collaborated with Peersyst Technology on XRPL and the platform’s CEO Ferran Prat had this to say:
“Axelar is a battle-tested, production-ready and fully compatible bridge to bring wrapped XRP (eXRP) as a native currency to the XRPL EVM sidechain. The Peersyst engineering team is now working to migrate the main bridge to Axelar for the devnet.”
Big moves for Ripple
The latest Ripple news adds to a list of notable moves in the past few days.
Earlier, the US-based blockchain company confirmed plans for a dollar-pegged stablecoin. The firm also revealed a groundbreaking collaboration with the Georgia central bank and as reported, unveiled a massive ecosystem fund for blockchain innovation in Japan and Korea.
Notably, these and previous partnerships and developments have failed to spark a rally for the XRP token.
However, analysts are bullish that regulatory clarity could mark a turning point for the top 10 crypto by market cap.
XRP currently trades at $0.49.
