What is Flare Networks?
smart contracts coming to XRP Ledger
How will Flare Networks expand the XRP ecosystem?
Flare Networks is bringing smart contracts to the XRPL, which will open a world of DeFi opportunity.
Smart contracts have an unlimited number of use cases for blockchain tech.
They function to automate steps in a process, and are key to decentralized systems that don't rely on people or companies to function.
However, connecting smart contracts between blockchains (including XRPL) has been a technical challenge until Flare.
The future of blockchain will include MANY blockchains, and end users don't really care what the backend runs on.
Connecting blockchains SECURELY is difficult.
Many of the hacks that plague crypto happen on bridges where value (tokens) are transferred from one blockchain to another.
It's not possible to send a token from one blockchain (ETH) to another blockchain (POLYGON) so we have been using bridges & wrapped tokens.
Until Flare, it wasn't possible for a decentralized protocol to issue a token on another blockchain (called F-Assets in Flare's case).
Flare Networks has been in development for some time, and chose to test their software using a canary network called Songbird.
Unlike a testnet that is PURELY a testing environment, a canary network supports actual transaction to exchange value.
Moving forward, new protocols can build on Songbird until they are confident everything is ready to deploy on Flare.
Think of Songbird like the minor leagues in baseball - real games are played with real athletes, and Flare is the major leagues.
Once Flare is live, the opportunity for DeFi applications to use XRP will increase (as will uses outside of finance like NFT and Metaverse projects).