Flare Networks proposes two-way bridge to Ethereum

• Flare Networks has announced plans to build a trustless two-way bridge between Ethereum and Flare, with a government proposal as to whether it will be implemented.
• The bridge will be a means for Ethereum-based applications to access the XRP Ledger and vice versa.

Blockchain project Flare Networks, funded by the investment arm of Ripple, Xpring, has announced plans to integrate the XRPL and Ethereum ecosystems. Via witter, Flare Networks said it will present a first governance proposal to create a trustless two-way bridge between Ethereum and Flare:

Likely one of the first governance proposals that the foundation is going to be asked to consider is integrating a trustless 2 way bridge between Ethereum and Flare.

As reported by CNF, Flare Networks began its partnership with Ripple late last year with the Xpring funding. The goal of the partnership is to integrate smart contracts into the XRP Ledger. The investment was a means to extend the functionality of the XRP Ledger to more advanced smart contract based applications. Thus Flare Networks, the first Turing Complete Federated Byzantine Agreement (FBA) network, will implement a new use case for the XRP digital asset. To achieve this, it integrates the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

A two-way bridge between XRP and Ethereum

According to Flare’s CEO and founder Hugo Philion, the proposal seeks to let users decide, through the network’s governance model, whether they should invest resources in the proposal. At the same time, Philion said that there are already “several projects” that serve as a two-way bridge between another network and Ethereum. Therefore, they are confident that the project is viable.

Flare Networks also announced on Twitter that the two-way bridge would enable the use of the Flare Token (FXRP) on Ethereum, allowing existing Ethereum applications to access the XRP market:

This would allow FXRP to be used trustlessly on Ethereum as well as providing a scaling platform for Ethereum tokens and applications whilst giving access to the XRP market for existing Ethereum applications. This could bring together the #XRP and #Ethereum ecosystems.

Within the crypto community, the user responses were mixed. Some celebrated the announcement and integration of the two ecosystems by highlighting the benefits for the entire crypto space. Others reacted negatively by stating that Flare Networks can exist on its own and that the developers of the Ethereum will migrate “anyway” to the Flare network.

Just a few days ago, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse highlighted Flare’s advantages at the Crypto Town Hall, held in the United States:

From my point of view, Flare is combining the best of XRP (very fast settlement), Ethereum (smart contracts), and Avalanche (for consensus) which helps extend XRP’s utility and allows developers to create smart contracts for new use cases like lending and DeFi.