Flare Labs CEO Hugo Philion Offers Clarity as Ripple’s RLUSD Chainlink Partnership Sparks Uproar

Before Donald Trump’s victory at the polls sparked anticipation of friendly regulatory conditions, the XRP community already had a looming development stoking excitement: the launch of Ripple’s enterprise-grade stablecoin RLUSD that promised to bring liquidity and a DeFi boost to the XRP Ledger.

Following a recent Ripple partnership to bolster RLUSD’s DeFi suitability for Ethereum, however, a section of the XRP community has been left feeling jilted.

To bolster RLUSD’s use in DeFi, On Tuesday, January 7, Ripple announced that it had partnered with decentralized oracle provider Chainlink to offer reliable and secure price feeds for the stablecoin on Ethereum.

While the news had largely sparked excitement about RLUSD’s prospects, a cross-section of the community has been up in arms. These community members are also members of the Flare community.

To the surprise of no one, XRP holders who have also benefited from the Flare project are now questioning why Ripple did not partner with the network for RLUSD’s oracle needs.

After all, Flare has touted its oracle and interoperability capabilities as a major selling point, even describing itself as the “Chainlink for XRP.”

However, it appears that these XRP holders may have overlooked a crucial detail that would have made Flare unsuitable for the role.

As pointed out by Flare Labs CEO Hugo Philion, and later confirmed by a Chainlink team member, Flare does not currently provide oracles to other networks.

Responding to the uproar, Philion clarified that Flare did not yet provide oracles to other networks. He stressed that for now the focus of the network remained offering staking and DeFi incentives for bridged XRP, BTC, and DOGE.

I’m at a loss as to why this would be interesting. Ripple needs an oracle so that RLUSD can be used in lending protocols on Ethereum. Flare doesn’t provide oracles to other networks yet. It’s something that may come but there are much bigger opportunities to pursue first: FAssets…

— Hugo Philion ☀️ (@HugoPhilion) January 7, 2025

It is also unclear that Flare will ever expand its oracles beyond its network as Philion describes it as “something that MAY come.”

While the Flare co-founder’s statement has offered some calm, others have gone on to question the project’s value proposition.

If Flare’s value lies in offering DeFi opportunities to holders of assets like BTC, then it may have its work cut out for it. After all, blockchains like Ethereum already offer similar opportunities with more established DeFi ecosystems.

DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.