Everything You Need to Know About Ripple’s Codius Smart Contract Platform

Ripple’s development team is preparing to introduce a smart contract system called Codius. That system will give Ripple (XRP) Ethereum-like functionality, allowing users to lock into smart contracts secured by the Ripple blockchain.

Codius has been making headlines since late 2017, when it was first revealed that Ripple was working on the project. However, Ripple first announced Codius all the way back in 2014. By June 2015, Ripple had canceled the project, citing a “small and nascent decentralization market” as being too immature to handle Ripple’s smart contracts.

Then, in November 2017, Ripple suddenly announced they were re-launching Codius and re-introducing smart contracts to the Ripple ecosystem.

Ripple has re-launched Codius with the tagline, “where smart programs live”. It’s an open hosting protocol designed to implement a smart contract system. the platform was explained in detail in this 2014 whitepaper published by Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas and Evan Schwartz.

In that whitepaper, the pair described Codius as “just a way to make decentralization easier.” The goal was to enhance the capabilities of the Ripple network to make it the ultimate decentralized solution for the financial ecosystem – including the banks and large-scale enterprises targeted by Ripple.

As of May 2018, it’s not clear where the Codius project stands. We have no information about a launch date, and the Ripple team has been relatively quiet about Codius since November. The platform could be on the backburner. Or, Ripple could be preparing to launch Codius this summer.

Codius Features: How Does Codius Add Smart Contracts to Ripple?

The most recent version of Codius is in active development. At launch, the platform will offer the following features:

Fast: Codius will run at “incredibly fast” speeds, running close to native Ripple speeds.

Secure: Codius will offer “state-of-the-art sandboxing”, which means applications are isolated from the host and from each other, preventing rogue smart contracts from targeting critical network components.

JavaScript: You won’t need to learn specialized programming languages to interact with Codius. Instead, Codius supports JavaScript.

Built-in Payments: Codius applications can pay each other using a built-in micropayments system encoded into Codius.

Enterprise Grade: Codius is expected to become a crucial component of Ripple’s enterprise-grade financial network. Codius is designed to be integrated for banking and enterprise roles.

Connected: “Codius can talk to anything connected to the internet,” explains Ripple.

Ripple Codius Release Date

Codius is a mysterious project. The project was first announced in 2014, then scrapped in 2015. Then, in November 2017, there was a flurry of online activity about Ripple and their Codius initiative.

As of May 2018, it’s not clear where the Codius project stands. Ripple has gone quiet about the project since November.

Codius could be on the backburner. Or, Ripple could be preparing for an explosive launch in the near future. We’ll keep you posted if – or when – Ripple’s Codius smart contract platform is ever released.