XRP Ledger’s ecosystem is continuing to grow as the market develops more and more innovation each day.
Even though not much has been said as XRP only focuses on remittance and other international transactions, the ecosystem of protocol on its ledger is growing with the development of a side chain called Xahau Network.
In this article we will be talking about the side chain of XRP and is the Xahau Network worth looking at.
What is The Xahau Network?
Xahau Network is a side chain in the XRP Ledger ecosystem that is specifically used to create decentralised applications or DApps and other protocols on the XRP Ecosystem.
It was launched in October 2023, where until right now the mainnet of this side chain is still being developed so that it could reach its promise.
The promise is that the side chain will be scalable and can help the XRP Ledger process transactions while hosting DApps on top of it.
Prior to the existence of the Xahau Network, the XRP Ledger was only intended to be used as a platform for transactions, mainly international transactions.
This is because XRP was created to compete with banks and give alternatives to its users with a platform to transact internationally without having to wait more than a day and with less fees.
With banks, international transactions can take up to a week with high fees that are usually attached to the transactions.
The XRP Ledger wants to stop normalising that with their own decentralised and semi centralised Ledger so that users can transcat internationally, whether they are an institution or just a regular retail user.
Because of this, smart contracts are basically non-existent in the XRP Ecosystem, except smart contracts that are used to process tokens and transactions plus an escrow smart contract.
An escrow smart contract is a form of smart contract on the XRP Ledger that can be used to lock and disburse funds in a specific period of time, like regular escrows do in banks.
As you can see, this is why there are no DApps being created on top of the XRP Ledger, because there are no platform or smart contracts that can accommodate the existence of DApps on top of it.
This is the main value of Xahau Network, which is to be the side chain for the XRP Ledger to help developers create DApps on top of the XRP Ledger indirectly.
What Does it Do?
Xahau Network is basically a side chain, which means that it can help the XRP Ledger process its transactions while also able to exist as its own blockchain.
The blockchain is not necessarily a layer two blockchain as it can be its own layer one blockchain and build its own ecosystem.
The perfect example of the relationship between Xahau Network and the XRP Ledger is Ethereum and Polygon.
Polygon was primarily known as Ethereum’s layer two blockchain before it became its own ecosystem as it now has its own venture fund to foster the growth of its DApps.
The role of Xahau Network is pretty similar to Polygon in the sense that it can help the main chain process transactions while at the same time host DApps to either run on the main chain or on its blockchain.
Xahau Network does this by implementing a format of smart contract called Hooks that can exists either on the Xahau Network itself or on the XRP Ledger.
There is already a hook builder, similar to a smart contract builder that can be accessed through the Xahau Network official site.
The smart contract lets developers build decentralised applications easily as they are similar to any platform on other blockchains.
The cool thing is that the smart contract can be written in any language that is compileable through WASM or WebAssembly.
This means that even Web2 developers with the right repo template can create their own Web3 DApps on the Xahau Network.
Regarding the validators, just like the XRP Ledger, Xahau Network uses the XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol which is created by the team behind XRP.
This consensus mechanism is semi-decentralised meaning that the core developer still plays a huge role in ensuring transactions go smoothly.
The mechanism is inspired by the Proof of Work and the Proof of Stake mechanism all together to bring a new mechanism that is secure and scalable.
It uses a Federated Byzantine Agreement mechanism that lets a minimum set of 80% of all validators agree on a transaction for it to be considered valid.
Since XRP is a ledger, not a blockchain, and Xahau Network is technically also a ledger, the infrastructure itself is not linear, meaning there can be multiple transactions being validated by a set of validators at the same time, making its speed faster.
Token Economics of XAH
Xahau Network also has its own coin which is called XAH that is used as both a utility coin and a governance coin for the validators.
There is not much clear information regarding the token economics of XAH but there are around 600 Million of XAH circulating in the market where the price has been going down ever since its launch.
The lack of information about this coin is due to the fact that marketing and publication is not seen as the primary focus of the team.
Development Stage
Since its launch, the project has only tweeted once which was to say “Hello World” a typical greeting from developers who just created a new code or product.
The tweet was done at the time of the mainnet launch which was around October 2023, where after that the Twitter account seems to not have any more information on it.
There are also no community groups or chats whatsoever since there is no discord or telegram that exists representing the Xahau Network project.
The network itself seems to process very little transactions according to its blockchain explorer or scanner, meaning that there aren’t many XRP Ledger users that use the network.
Also looking at the scalability aspect from the data on the scanner, it seems that Xahau Network is less scalable than the XRP Ledger, as the transaction speed is pretty much the same but with higher cost.
So, even though the infrastructure behind the project is great, the scalability aspect is still being developed.
At the same time, it seems that there are no developers wanting to capitalise on it yet, as there aren’t any DApps built on top of the Xahau Network.
Luckily, there is a new project called Evernode, that is trying to revive Xahau Network, with its integration as a hosting platform for developers that want to launch DApps on the Xahau Network and the XRP Ledger.
Compared to the Xahau Network, Evernode seems more active, which prompted speculations that the team behind Xahau Network has shifted to Evernode, explaining the fact that all their social media are so dormant and there is very little development happening on the platform.
As for Evernode itself, it has just done an airdrop of its own token called EVERS for XRP holders and is currently doing some marketing and community development, which is a good sign for the project.
Evernode seems to be continuing the dream of DApps existing on the XRP Ecosystem, so even though the Xahau Network is quite dormant, it is currently supporting the growth of Evernode.
Conclusion
Overall, the Xahau Network itself seems to not be worth the time to look at, as the focus should be pointed towards Evernode if you are an XRP enthusiast and want to see the Ledger grow with the hopes of hosting DApps in the future.
If you are looking to buy XAH, it is not really recommended as the price is still going down and there is no news or development yet to help the price go back up.
Although, there is a possibility of the price going up again, if Evernode successfully revives the hope of DApps on the XRP Ledger, because then people would know how great the Xahau Network is.
But for now, since there are no DApps built on top of it, it is better to stay away from it if you are looking to make a quick profit. If you are looking to speculate in the long term, it is better to use a separate allocation of funds that you are prepared to lose as the possibility of the coin going up is currently very little.
