July 3, 2025, Cannes, France – The Cosmos and Interop Ventures co-hosted EVM Sovereign Day on June 30 brought together over 18 ecosystem teams for a full day of keynotes, technical deep dives, and cross-ecosystem panels. The summit marked a significant leap forward for Cosmos as the internet of blockchains, with major announcements from Ripple, TAC, and Stride Labs.
Ripple's XPL EVM Sidechain Goes Live: Unlocking DeFi for XRP's $127B Ecosystem
In a keynote address, Luke Judges, Director at Ripple, and Ferran Torres, CEO and Founder of Peersyst, announced the mainnet launch of the XPL EVM sidechain. Built on the Cosmos SDK, this sidechain brings native decentralized finance capabilities to the XRP Ledger for the first time, unlocking a wave of consumer-oriented financial applications. With the XRP ecosystem valued at over $127 billion and serving more than six million users, the sidechain enables these users to access applications across XRP, EVM, and Cosmos via the native IBC interoperability protocol. Barry Plunkett, Co-CEO of Interchain Labs, commented: “From Telegram to XRP, millions of people will soon access the EVM and the multichain world with Cosmos.”
TAC to Bring EVM DeFi to Telegram's One Billion Users
Marco Monaco, Co-founder of TAC, presented the upcoming TAC blockchain, an EVM application layer designed as an extension of the TON and Telegram ecosystem. TAC will allow Telegram's massive user base – over one billion – to access DeFi applications built on EVM without leaving the Telegram app or their wallets. This unlocks previously impossible use cases for TON and connects it to Ethereum and hundreds of other chains via IBC, dramatically expanding the reach of cross-chain DeFi.
Stride DEX: IBC Eureka-Powered Cross-Chain Liquidity
Stride Labs detailed the evolution of the IBC Flywheel with the upcoming Stride DEX, a milestone for Cosmos-native DeFi. Backed by the Interchain Foundation, the DEX will enable multichain swaps and provide a deep liquidity layer powered by IBC Eureka. With one-click routing through the Cosmos Hub, users will be able to interact with native assets not only from hundreds of IBC-connected chains and Ethereum, but also from Solana, Bitcoin, and more in the near future. Stride aims to abstract the multichain experience, enabling high-performance, programmable DeFi in an interconnected world.
Cosmos EVM: The Only Fully Integrated L1 EVM Stack
Barry Plunkett and Maghnus Mareneck, Co-CEOs of Interchain Labs, outlined Cosmos' growth roadmap, highlighting the debut of Cosmos EVM – the only fully integrated Layer 1 EVM stack on the market. Used by Ripple, TAC, Babylon, and other protocols, Cosmos EVM offers developers unparalleled flexibility and control down to the chain's core logic. Combined with the recent IBC upgrade that connects Ethereum (and soon L2s and Solana) to Cosmos, this stack positions Cosmos as the epicenter for financial assets, RWAs, institutions, and multichain applications. As Plunkett noted, “We are uniting and connecting ecosystems through the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol to bring new opportunities at the intersection of all chains.”
Hosted at the Hotel Belle Plage in Cannes, the EVM Sovereign Day was the first event of the Sovereign Series, a curated set of global gatherings exploring Web3's true potential. For future events, follow @cosmos on X. Cosmos continues to solidify its role as the internet of blockchains, enabling sovereign, interoperable networks that connect the entire Web3 ecosystem.