The former principal developer advocate at San Francisco-based payments firm Ripple is revealing that a key functionality is coming to the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

Ripple insider Matt Hamilton responds to a claim made by an anonymous Twitter user that payments network XRP has no use case.

According to Hamilton, XRP is being used on a daily basis for international payments, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and web monetization among others.

Last month, Ripple announced that its crypto-based settlement solution, On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), witnessed massive growth this year and is now being supported in a growing number of payout markets, including Africa, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, Singapore, the UAE and the UK.

Also in November, Ripple’s chief technology officer David Schwartz said that a number of NFTs have already been minted on the XRPL.

Hamilton adds that the XRPL’s NFT functionality is a crucial building block toward the development of smart contracts.

“Well, most functionality needed (fungible tokens, NFTs, escrows, multisig, decentralized exchanges) are all built in. But yes, smart contracts are in development.” 

In October, a blog post from the community of XRPL developers hinted that Ripple was already making a push to bring smart contract capabilities to the XRP Ledger.

According to RippleX, blockchain development company Peersyst Technology is testing an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible sidechain for XRPL. The project aims…