XRP Ledger deploys ninth Smart Escrow Devnet release

Developers have deployed the ninth release of the Smart Escrow Devnet on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). This update is part of an ongoing effort to introduce programmable escrow capabilities to the network, allowing assets to be released based on custom conditions defined by WebAssembly (WASM) code.

A significant technical shift in this release is the migration of the WebAssembly virtual machine from C++ to Rust. According to RippleX senior software engineer Mayukha Vadari, this architectural change provides a unified entry point for gas calculations, error handling, and controls. The transition is reported to increase performance for core system function calls by 30% to 50%.

The Smart Escrow feature, currently in the draft and development stages (XLS-0100), aims to enable use cases such as notary approvals, compliance checks, and peer-to-peer conditional transactions using oracle data. Once the feature reaches stability, it may be subject to a mainnet vote. The proposed structure includes gas limits for code execution and ensures that if conditions are not met, assets return to the sender after the escrow expires.