XRP unveils a key technical feature amidst a bullish wave

• XRP was in the middle of a bullish wave, growing 24% over the past week and 40% over the last month.
• XRP Ledger’s network growth reached a three-month high on 29 March.

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is a layer-1 blockchain developed by Ripple [XRP] which functions as a global payments network, serving major banks and financial services.

Over the last month, it has witnessed a significant increase in its trading activity. Recently, the number of new accounts activated, which is a good indicator of the network’s growth, reached a three-month high of 3,383 on 29 March, as per XRP Scan.

Additionally, the blockchain has processed an average of more than 1.4 million transactions daily since mid-March, including the 16-month high of 2.236 million on 19 March.

Anticipating further expansion, Ripple Labs is set to dish out a new technological upgrade to address scalability issues that may surface in the future.

Realistic or not, here’s XRP’s market cap in BTC terms

XRPL Sidechain

Ripple announced that the sidechains support for XRPL was available for testing and initial application development on a new devnet. Ripple asked the developer community to try out the new design and provide feedback about features, bugs, or other network issues.

The Ripple ecosystem has been working on its vision of federated sidechains, designed to allow developers to adapt the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to their use case requirements.

Ripple also introduced Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain on devnet to bring existing Solidity-based smart contracts written for EVM-compatible chains to the XRPL.

Additionally, due to popular demand for a native smart contract-like functionality, the team unveiled Hooks. These small pieces of code will provide additional programmability on top of XRPL.

Can we get a witness (server)?! 🙌 The new #XRPL Sidechains Devnet is now available for testing and development.

Check out the technical documentation to learn more and get started unlocking🔓 new use cases today. #BuiltOnXRPL https://t.co/B0lZDunUmI

— RippleX (@RippleXDev) March 29, 2023

XRP creates social buzz

XRP reacted positively to this development and was up 1.3% to $0.544 at press time, per CoinMarketCap. The coin is in the middle of a bullish wave, growing 24% over the past week and a whopping 40% from what it was a month ago.

Data from Santiment revealed that large addresses were on an XRP accumulating spree in March. The number of addresses holding between 1,000 to 10 million coins swelled up significantly.

The accumulation by this cohort of investors is a good indicator of the prevailing bullish sentiments for a coin.

XRP’s social volume also grew consistently throughout March and reached its one-month high on 29 March, an implication that the crypto community was taking note of XRP’s momentum.

Is your portfolio green? Check the Ripple Profit Calculator

XRP also witnessed massive demand in the futures market as the Open Interest (OI) surged to nearly $730 million at press time, representing a weekly growth of 38%, per data from Coinglass.