Ripple is testing a way for developers to deploy smart contracts made for the larger and more popular Ethereum on its XRP Ledger (XRPL) blockchain with little effort.

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is the software that runs smart contracts on Ethereum. Ripple said an EVM-compatible sidechain " a blockchain that runs in parallel with the main XRPL blockchain " is now live on the company's devnet, which is where developers can test implementations before they go live on the main network.

Read more: What Is Ripple and the XRP Cryptocurrency?

Ripple and XRPL stand to potentially benefit because the work developers have already put into building Ethereum smart contracts could be leveraged in the entirely separate Ripple ecosystem.

The announcement Monday is just the first step of a three-part process. The second phase will go live in early 2023, when the EVM sidechain will become permissionless, meaning anyone can join it. The third phase is slated for the second quarter, when Ripple will fully deploy the software.

"Our goal in 2023 is to have an EVM sidechain connected to the XRPL mainnet," Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz told CoinDesk. "The bridge in the final solution will be decentralized and all components of the solution will be production ready to handle real world scale and use cases."

Read more: Ripple Proposes Adding Federated Sidechains