Ripple announces Xpring Developer Platform

At Ripple, we’re working to bring money to the Internet. This means helping lay the foundation for value to be exchanged as quickly as information is today. It’s this vision, known as the Internet of Value (IoV), that drives everything we do: from building our global payments network, RippleNet, to establishing initiatives like Xpring.

Today, we are thrilled to announce another milestone in this journey with the launch of the Xpring Developer Platform —the open developer platform for money. Similar to how RippleNet is building a global network for financial institutions, Xpring is building a global network for developers.

This new platform offers a set of tools, services and programs that makes it easier for developers to send and receive payments by building on the XRP Ledger and leveraging Interledger Protocol (ILP) as a bridge to any currency, fiat or blockchain. In short, the Xpring Developer Platform removes the pain and messiness of integrating money into apps.

Unlocking Economic Value

Payments today are broken. They can take days to arrive and operate in a maze of silo’d networks.This is because traditional payment rails were not built to meet today’s business and consumer demands for reliable, fast, convenient and low-cost payments. The time for change is now. In the same way the Internet unlocked economic growth through democratisation of information, the IoV will unlock economic value through global access and digitisation of money.

Over the past five years, the Internet accounted for 21% of the GDP growth in mature economies. In a given country, each 1% increase of electronic payments creates $100 billion additional GDP.  As we saw in the initial era of the Internet, technology and capital on their own were not sufficient to drive this growth. The industry needed products and programs that directly served the needs of developers.

Realising IoV Through a Developer Ecosystem

With the Xpring Developer Platform, we are arming developers with easy access to technology proven to move money instantly.

XRP has the fastest and cheapest settlement of any top digital asset and is the first digital asset with a real-world use case—cross-border payments via RippleNet. When paired with ILP, they bridge the gap between any fiat or digital asset and form a universal, ubiquitous way to make payments. Together, they are used for trading in cross-blockchain transactions, micropayments, web monetisation and even gaming.

But this is just the beginning. The Xpring Developer Platform was created to further improve and build out these technologies by creating partnerships and providing developer support and advocacy to solve real problems faster. Only by growing the developer ecosystem around fast and low-cost payments technology will the real power of XRP and ILP will be realised.

Get Involved Today

Real change doesn’t happen alone. Ripple and Xpring are partnering with developers and the community at large to bring these technologies mainstream and realise the IoV. We are building products that address developer needs and are working to create utility for XRP and drive adoption for ILP.

This is our call to the community to get involved. Begin to build features for new use cases on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Send test payments with ILP. Build on top of the Xpring SDK. Run a validator. These are just some of the ways the industry will continue to move forward together.

Share your thoughts with us on the XRPChat Forums (link) or reach out to the Xpring team.