Ripple has announced its plans to boost the programmability of XRP Ledger.   

It plans to introduce smart contracts as soon as next year. For now, this functionality remains in the research phase. 

XRPL Hooks will serve as the foundation for introducing smart contracts on the mainnet. 

Ripple will focus on ensuring permissionless, easy learning and customization while also minimizing the impact to performance and cost of infrastructure. 

On top of that, the XRPL EVM sidechain in the near future. The sidechain, which was originally announced by the RippleX team in June, will make it possible for developers to create new decenralized applications (dApps) that will be capable of combining the best features of XRPL and EVM. 

While commenting on the announcement, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the foundations of crypto infrastructure serving real-world use cases are steadily becoming more robust by the day.

Earlier this year, the XRP Ledger also added a new Automated Market Maker (AMM) functionality.