Crypto Startup Flare Outlines Plan to Bring Smart Contracts to XRP, Says Bitcoin and Litecoin May be Next

Ripple partner and crypto startup Flare Networks says it’s bringing smart contracts to XRP, and it could move onto other networks like Bitcoin and Litecoin in the future, according to Flare co-founder Hugo Philion.

Philion notes, however, that holders of Flare’s native token, Spark, will have the last say whether the protocol will expand to other blockchains. Spark investors can hold a governance vote after Flare launches in December.

Says the co-founder in a new interview with Crypto Eri,

“The immediate purpose of Flare is to provide a platform for XRP value to be used with smart contracts, and we’ve defined that quite succinctly with the FXRP system and the Flare paper. That’s really the first purpose, and then also in that Flare paper, it’s defined something called the Spark-derived applications, and these will allow that system to expand such that the value from other networks that are not Turing complete, like Bitcoin or Litecoin, could be replicated in the same way that FXRP is being put onto the network.

That is something that will have to be a governance issue, and something that Spark token holders will vote on over time.”

According to the white paper, Flare is a Turing-complete smart contract protocol that leverages the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The crypto asset is designed to “enable trustless token representations of non-Turing complete tokens” such as XRP, Bitcoin, and Litecoin, and allow these networks to run smart contracts.

Flare Networks plans to offer XRP investors free Spark governance token for every XRP they hold when Flare takes a “snapshot” on December 12th. They will not have to give up their XRP to receive them.

In addition to being a governance token, Philion says Spark will be used as collateral.

“Spark is the token of the network but the network is a smart contract network and Spark is used to collateralize, or basically to provide safety to the FXRP system. The FXRP system is the system that allows for the decentralized, or trustless, issuance of XRP on Flare. So what that means is that you have XRP on Flare, and that then allows you to use XRP with smart contracts.”