State of XRP Ledger Q4 2025

Key Insights

• U.S. spot XRP ETFs launched in November 2025, reaching $1 billion in AUM in less than four weeks, the fastest to do so since ETH. The offering significantly expands U.S access to XRP for investors previously limited by custody and compliance barriers.
• The XRPL is primed for institutional adoption, as necessary identity, financial, compliance, and privacy features are being implemented. These include multipurpose tokens (MPTs) with metadata to store RWA parameters, a native lending protocol, confidential MPTs using Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), and credentials to control access via KYC/AML.
• Permissioned Domains (XLS-80) is scheduled to go live in February and builds on Credentials, allowing entities, such as institutions, to require specific credentials, including Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, to access their offerings on the XRPL.
• Ripple’s USD-pegged stablecoin, RLUSD, closed 2025 with a market cap of $235 million on the XRPL (+164% QoQ), making it the network’s largest stablecoin.
• The XRPL closed 2025 with an all-time high distributed RWA market cap of $281.2 million (+37% QoQ) as issuance grew for several RWAs launched in Q2 2025, including Ondo’s OUSG tokenized treasury fund, Guggenheim’s Digital Commercial Paper, and tokenized real estate issued by Ctrl Alt.

Primer

XRP Ledger (XRP) has been running for over a decade, offering cross-currency and cross-border payments, and tokenization, among other features. Core value propositions of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) include fast and cheap transactions (relative to other currency-focused networks) and native functionalities — such as tokens, NFTs, a decentralized exchange (DEX), escrow functionality, embedded compliance, and token management.

With these capabilities, the XRPL can execute many of the same functions as other networks. NFTs, stablecoins, synthetic assets, and other markets found on programmable settlement layers are available on the XRPL as native functionality with composability through enshrined mechanisms such as a central limit order book (CLOB) and automated market maker (AMM). The XRPL base layer doesn't currently support arbitrary smart contracts, which was a deliberate design choice to prioritize security and stability through simplicity. However, plans to introduce advanced programmability via native smart contracts were announced in September 2024. The first step in this effort was the introduction of Extensions, a feature that allows developers to attach code to existing XRPL primitives to enhance their functionality without entirely new smart contracts. Additionally, alternative execution environments, via sidechains, add additional functionality and use cases to the overall ecosystem.

The XRPL is supported by various development groups and individuals, including the XRP Ledger Foundation, Ripple, XRPL Labs (and Xaman), and XRPL Commons. It provides a digital payment infrastructure not just for individuals but also for existing financial entities, such as commercial banks and fintechs, with the community's deep interest in B2B and B2C solutions for finance. For a full primer on XRP Ledger, refer to our Initiation of Coverage report.

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Key Metrics

Financial Analysis

XRP ended Q4’25 as the fifth-largest crypto asset by market capitalization at $111.6 billion (-34.5% QoQ), underperforming the combined market capitalization of BTC, ETH, and SOL, which decreased by 24.4% QoQ. XRP’s price decreased 35.4% QoQ to $1.84, with the discrepancy between market cap and price due to a 1.4% increase in circulating supply.

Year-over-year, XRP’s circulating market cap declined 6.5% from $119.4 billion at the close of Q4 2024. Transaction fees (USD) declined 74.1% QoQ from $513,900 to $133,100, while native transaction fees declined 66.9%% QoQ from 174,200 XRP to 57,600 XRP. Notably, transaction fees on the XRPL are burnt and not distributed to stakers like on many other networks.

U.S. Spot ETFs and Other Financial Products

Major U.S. spot XRP ETFs launched in Q4 2025 following SEC approval, reaching $1 billion in AUM in less than four weeks, the fastest to do so since ETH. The offering significantly expands U.S. access to XRP for retail and institutional investors previously limited by custody and compliance barriers. The first of these was Canary Capital’s XRPC on Nov. 13, followed by. Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ, Grayscale’s GXRP, 21shares’ TOXR, and Bitwise’s XRP in the weeks thereafter. As of Jan. 28, 2026, 789.8 million XRP (1.3% of circulating supply) was held by spot XRP ETFs, with five ETFs holding more than 100 million XRP each: Canary Capital XRPC (182.6 million), Bitwise XRP (160.2 million), Franklin Templeton XRPZ (142.8 million), 21Shares TOXR (118.5 million), and Grayscale GXRP (112.3 million). Spot XRP ETF listing would not have been possible without the resolution of the Ripple vs. SEC case in August 2025, as spot crypto ETFs require the underlying cryptocurrency to be classified as a non-security for secondary market trades to enable direct holdings without triggering full securities registration.

Separately, in October, options on XRP futures launched on the CME, while spot-quoted XRP futures went live in December.

Digital Asset Treasuries (DATs)

Following the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) plan pioneered by Strategy’s Executive Chairman, Michael Saylor, many companies, including a number publicly traded in the U.S., have announced acquisitions of XRP or plans to acquire the token. However, as of January 2026, the majority of these plans remain unexecuted. Notably, on Dec. 12, 2025, Vivopower announced it had entered into a definitive joint venture agreement with South Korean asset manager Lean Ventures to establish a dedicated investment vehicle to acquire and hold an initial target of $300 million of Ripple Labs shares, to realize XRP exposure at “a material discount to the spot price.”

Other XRP acquisition plans announced in 2025 In the U.S., include Trident Digital Tech Holdings ($500 million), Webus International ($300 million), Wellgistics ($50 million), Nature’s Miracle Holding Inc. ($20 million), Reliance Group Global ($17 million), and Hyperscale Data Inc. ($10 million), among others. Outside of the U.S., gaming company Gumi announced plans to purchase $17.5 million in XRP, while it is estimated Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings has billions in XRP holdings. Onchain protocols are also establishing XRP strategic reserves as leading XRPL DEX gateway XPMarket did so in July 2025.

XRP Burns and Escrow Release

On XRPL, transaction fees are systematically burned, applying deflationary pressure to the total supply of 100 billion XRP. Since the XRP Ledger’s inception, about 14.3 million XRP ($26.3 million at the close of Q4’25) has been burned. This low burn rate is due to the relatively low transaction fees (<$0.0008 per transaction) on the network. One billion XRP ($1.84 billion at the close of Q4’25) is released from escrow to Ripple per month. Any XRP not spent or distributed by Ripple in that month is put into new escrow contracts. This system will continue until the remaining ~34.2 billion XRP becomes liquid.

Unlike many other blockchain networks, the XRPL does not distribute rewards or transaction fees to its validators. In Proof-of-Association (PoA), rather than receiving rewards, validators are mainly incentivized by supporting the decentralization of the network, similar to a full node for Ethereum/Bitcoin rather than a validator/miner. Notably, in November, Senior Director of Engineering at Ripple J. Ayo Akinyele, wrote an article exploring what it would look like for native staking of XRP to be supported on the XRPL in some form.

Network Analysis

In Q4’25, key network metrics were relatively flat QoQ. Average daily active addresses declined 8.2% QoQ from 53,300 to 49,000, while total addresses increased 5.7% to 7.3 million, and total new addresses declined 4.9% to 425,400.

Account creations and deletions are meaningful on the XRPL (unlike EVM networks) as accounts require a 1 XRP deposit to be created, which can be reclaimed after deleting the account. As such, the XRPL’s account metrics are more reliable than other networks where account creations can easily be spammed/Sybiled at zero cost. Notably, the base reserve requirement was lowered from 10 XRP to 1 XRP in December 2024.

Addresses on the XRPL can contain destination tags, which enable a single address to receive and track XRP deposits for an arbitrary number of users. As a result, the number of daily active addresses is skewed downward, given that one account (e.g., a centralized exchange) could be responsible for a large number of users. It should be noted that a unique address is required for receiving tokens on most other networks, like ETH on Ethereum or BTC on Bitcoin.

For the sixth consecutive quarter, active receiver addresses exceeded active sender addresses on the XRPL. Average daily receivers declined 6.6% QoQ from 50,300 to 47,000, and average daily senders decreased 15.4% from 25,300 to 21,700. The active recipient metric is determined by the number of addresses that receive a transfer or other transaction. When recipients outpace senders, it indicates that more previously inactive wallets are receiving tokens distributed by senders than there are senders distributing those tokens.

One common reason for this dynamic is airdrops, which are a token distribution strategy to reward and engage community members. In June, Midnight, a privacy-focused sidechain in the Cardano ecosystem, completed the snapshot for its NIGHT token airdrop, which XRPL addresses could qualify for by holding more than $100 worth of XRP. The claim period began on Aug. 5, 2025 and ran through Oct. 4, 2025. Airdrops are more practical on networks with low transaction fees, such as the XRPL, or networks that enable batch transactions.

In Q4, average daily transactions increased 3.1% QoQ from 1.78 million to 1.83 million. The total daily transactions metric includes 45 different transaction types, such as payments, escrow creations, NFT burns, and account deletions.

In each of the last five quarters, Payment and OfferCreate have represented the vast majority of transactions on the XRP Ledger.

• Payment represents a transfer of value from one account to another, while OfferCreate submits an order to exchange cryptoassets. Notably, this transaction type only creates an “Order” on the order book and does not necessarily facilitate an exchange unless it completes an existing open Order. OfferCreate initiates a DEX limit order, and Offer objects represent bids/asks on the order book.
• Offers are consumed to process transactions such as Payment and OfferCancel (triggered manually or by expirations). If an Offer is only partially consumed by a transaction, a new Offer is created with the remainder of the original, similar to a UTXO. An Offer can be canceled by the OfferCancel transaction. Trust Lines are structures for holding tokens that protect accounts from being sent unwanted tokens, and the TrustSet transaction is used to open or close those Trust Lines.

After increasing 0.8% in Q3, Payment transactions declined 8.1% QoQ to 909,000. Historically, for smaller activity spikes, the difference between the active recipient and sender addresses has been largely due to centralized exchanges and custodians using destination tags and sending Payment transactions. Centralized exchanges and custodians mostly use the Payment transaction type for deposits and withdrawals. As such, the Payment transaction type has consistently had more receiving addresses than sending addresses. In addition, users typically prefer creating wallets on centralized solutions for easy access to the initial XRP required to create a self-custody wallet. After acquiring their initial XRP, many users withdraw to their self-custody wallets, resulting in fewer active senders and many active receivers.

Payments transactions exceeded OfferCreates transactions for the eighth consecutive quarter, even as Payments' share of the overall transaction count decreased to 49.7% from 55.7%, while OfferCreates’ share increased to 42% from 33.2%. Prior to Q1 2024, OfferCreate was the most common transaction type. Notably, OracleSet, which creates or updates an existing price oracle, was the fifth most common transaction type in Q4, accounting for 0.7% of the overall transaction count. Price Oracles were enabled on the XRPL in November 2024 for pricing wrapped/bridged assets. Anyone can now call OracleSet to create or update an existing price oracle or OracleDelete to delete an existing price oracle.

In April 2025, Band Protocol released price feeds for WBTC, RLUSD, USDT, and USDC on the XRPL, in addition to ETH, BTC, and XRP. Band Protocol and DIA previously integrated with the XRPL in December 2024. With oracles enabled, the get_aggregate_price API call aggregates the price of an asset from all live oracles while discarding any outliers. The “Other” category of transactions includes transaction types for NFTs, escrows, multisigs, setting signer keys, and more. These transaction types are covered in depth in the Ecosystem Overview section.

DEX

CLOB

A built-in central limit order book (CLOB) processes exchanges on the XRPL for fungible tokens (also called Issued Currencies, or simply, tokens). This CLOB has been part of the XRPL since its inception and comes with the benefit of fewer trust assumptions and consolidated liquidity, rather than the inherent vulnerabilities of smart contracts. The majority of transactions come from the native CLOB. Although there is only one CLOB, there are many marketplaces acting as gateways that facilitate access. Gateways, also known as marketplaces, all share liquidity and provide a viable user interface for the average user. At the end of Q4, the top four gateways by volume facilitated were Magnetic X, First Ledger, XPMarket, and Sologenic.

AMM

In addition to the existing CLOB, an automated market maker (AMM) was voted into the protocol in March of 2024, as detailed by the XLS-30 standard. All prominent DEXs (First Ledger, XPMarket, Magnetic X, Sologenic, etc) and newer platforms, such as Orchestra Finance and Moai Finance, have integrated. AMMs function through liquidity pools that algorithmically price assets rather than creating offers of preset specifications. Liquidity pools allow holders to earn a share of trade fees on their tokens by offering them as liquidity. Importantly, orders can be partially routed through the AMM and partially through the CLOB, as both work together as part of the DEX.

Servers

Nodes and validators, known as servers, all run the same client software: rippled. Anyone can run a node to maintain a local copy of the ledger, relay transactions, and provide access to the ledger. PoA requires each node to set a list of trusted nodes, which it will rely on for consensus. This list of trusted nodes is known as a unique node list (UNL) and determines the validator set that participates in XRPL’s PoA consensus.

Over 20% of nodes have upgraded to V3.0.0 since its release on Dec. 9, 2025. At the end of 2025, the XRPL was supported by 946 nodes and 78 validators. Nodes decreased from 957, and validators decreased from 177 since the end of Q3 2025.

XRPL servers participate in federated consensus as part of the XRPL’s Proof-of-Association (PoA) consensus mechanism. Validators do not stake tokens or receive financial rewards. Instead, the system is based on trust between nodes. Each node sets a list of trusted nodes, known as a unique node list (UNL). Notably, in Q3 2025, custody of the default UNL (dUNL) list moved to the new XRPL Foundation, and began being served from a new URL that uses a new key pair. Validators that use the dUNL were required to migrate to the new UNL settings by Sept. 30 to maintain service continuity. Updated UNL lists were released on Nov. 13, and Dec. 12, with a number of nodes removed for non-responsiveness, and Peersyst and tequ added as node operators.

Additionally, the Negative UNL is a feature that adjusts servers' “effective UNLs” based on which validators are currently online and operational. The UNLModify transaction, which was called an average of 2.8 times per day in Q4, marks a change in the Negative UNL, indicating that a trusted validator has gone offline or come back online.

Ecosystem Analysis

Although the XRPL’s ecosystem hosts many of the same features as programmable settlement networks, such as Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano, the XRPL does not natively support smart contracts. However, in September 2024, Ripple, along with the broader XRP community, announced its intent to introduce native smart contracts on the XRPL via an upcoming XLS proposal. The first step in this effort is the introduction of Extensions, a feature that allows developers to attach code to existing XRPL primitives to enhance their functionality without entirely new smart contracts. This will enable permissionless customization of XRPL’s built-in features, such as escrows, NFTs, authorized trustlines, payment channels, the DEX, and AMM.

The first extension is “Smart Escrows,” which will allow developers to write custom release conditions requiring a notary account, credentials, or other means to unlock an escrow. Smart Escrow release is targeted for Q1 2026, as is a full Smart Contract devnet following the release of Smart Escrows. Separately, an amendment to enable Token Escrows (XLS-85) was released as part of Rippled V2.5.0 in June, but has yet to be enabled. In November, the XRPL Commons team released Bedrock, a development tool for XRPL smart contracts written in Go.

Historically, arbitrary smart contracts have not been enabled on the XRPL base layer as a design choice to ensure maximum security, performance, and stability. Instead, ecosystem artifacts, such as a DEX and Issued Currencies, are natively built into the protocol. The XRPL supports multiple assets through tokens (also called Issued Currencies or IOUs). They are onchain representations of arbitrary currencies, commodities, units, etc.

Issued Currencies

The total market cap of fungible tokens on XRPL, also known as Issued Currencies, increased 20.7% QoQ to $439.9 million due largely to a 187.8% QoQ increase in the market cap of Ripple’s U.S. dollar stablecoin RLUSD to $257.6 million.

Notably, XPMarket, the provider of Issued Currencies market cap data, excludes wallets that hold more than 5% of a token’s total supply from the circulating supply used to calculate a token’s market cap, unless the founding team contacts XPMarket manually to justify the wallet’s holdings.

There are more than 27,000 listed assets on the XRPL, but the top token, RLUSD, accounted for 58.6% of the total market cap at the close of Q4, up from 27.9% of the total market cap at the close of Q3. Combined, the top five tokens accounted for 76%, up from 64.6% at the close of Q3. The top tokens on the XRPL by market cap at the end of 2025, according to XPMarket were as follows:

• Ripple USD (RLUSD) had a market cap of $257.6 million (+187.8% QoQ) and 36,840 holders (+4.3% QoQ). RLUSD is Ripple’s USD-pegged stablecoin launched on both the XRPL and Ethereum backed entirely by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. treasuries, and “other cash equivalents," with monthly third-party attestations.
• Sologenic (SOLO) had a market cap of $44.8 million (-56.9% QoQ) and 218,420 holders (+0.2% QoQ). SOLO is primarily used to pay transaction fees on the Sologenic gateway.
• Bitstamp BTC (BTC) had a market cap of $16.9 million (-20.2% QoQ) and 4,370 holders (flat QoQ). Bitstamp BTC is a wrapped version of BTC provided by Bitstamp.
• GateHub Fifth (ETH) had a market cap of $10 million (-29.6% QoQ) and 25,880 holders (-0.3% QoQ). GateHub Fifth ETH is a wrapped version of ETH provided by GateHub.
• Fuzzybear (FUZZY) had a market cap of $6.4 million (-58.4% QoQ) and 5,670 holders (+9.4% QoQ). FUZZY is a memecoin on the XRPL.

Trust Lines are structures in the XRP Ledger for holding fungible tokens and enforce the XRPL’s rule that someone cannot be forced to hold a token they don’t want. As such, Trust Lines make metrics around token behavior on the XRPL more reliable. While an account’s first two trustlines are free, thereafter the XRPL requires a 0.2 XRP (owner reserve) lockup for each object (such as an issued currency) that the address owns. Notably, in September, wallet provider Xaman released Xaman 4.21.1, providing a workaround to effectively send tokens without trustlines. This works by sending the tokens as a “check” which automatically sets up a trustline for the prospective receiver that they can opt to accept or decline. Sending as a check requires paying the 0.2 XRP fee to set up the trustline, which is returned to the sender if the receiver accepts the check, the offer is cancelled, or if the receiver declines the check.

A base reserve of 1 XRP is also required to create an address. These requirements make it expensive to enact a Sybil attack on XRPL metrics, such as the number of holders. For this reason, the number of holders is a reliable metric of a token’s adoption on the XRPL. The metric is especially relevant for fungible tokens, which have much higher supplies than NFTs.

Axelar, a full-stack interoperability protocol (i.e., a crypto overlay network), integrated the XRPL at the end of June 2025 alongside the launch of the XRPL EVM Sidechain, connecting the XRPL ecosystem to 60+ networks, including the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems. One of the notable tokens to launch on the XRPL EVM Sidechain is mXRP, a yield-bearing token issued by Midas under an EU-approved prospectus that earns XRP-yield through active management of XRP deposits by Hyperithm.

Additionally, Wormhole has partnered with Ripple to integrate its crosschain messaging infrastructure with both the XRPL and XRPL EVM Sidechain, enabling developers to transfer XRPL assets across more than 35 supported chains. These integrations make it easier to source liquidity from many of the highest-TVL networks. Finally, in December, regulated digital asset platform and qualified custodian Hex Trust announced plans to issue and custody wrapped XRP (WXRP) on Ethereum and other chains where RLUSD is available.

DEX (CLOB and AMM)

Average daily CLOB volume of fungible Issued Currencies on the XRPL decreased 10.1% QoQ from $7.9 million to $7.1 million, while average daily CLOB trades decreased 23.8% from 1 million to 764,800. Average daily CLOB traders decreased 14.2% QoQ to 6,700. First Ledger, a Telegram trading bot developed by the team behind xrp.cafe, is the leading DEX (i.e., the leading gateway to the native DEX) on the XRPL by trading volume facilitated. Other prominent DEXs (gateways) include XPMarket, Sologenic, and Magnetic X.

After peaking on Nov. 30, 2024, with $60.5 million in volume, daily AMM volume steadily declined with successive lower highs in Q1 and Q2. There was a spike to a Q3 daily high of $5.3 million on Sept. 16 followed by a continued decline in Q4. As a result, average daily AMM volume decreased 24.9% QoQ from $1.7 million in Q3 to $1.3 million in Q4.

Notably, XRP Ledger’s AMM design includes a mechanism that allows the liquidity providers of a respective liquidity pool to bid LP tokens for an auction slot, which grants a discount on trading fees for a 24-hour period. This mechanism is intended to incentivize the account holding the auction slot for a given liquidity pool to keep prices in balance with external markets. Liquidity on the AMM is shared across all DEXs (gateways), just like with the CLOB.

In Q4, average daily CLOB volume exceeded NFT volume by 256x ($649.6 million vs $2.5 million), the fifth consecutive quarter CLOB volume exceeded NFT volume by at least 90x. This sustained trend on the XRPL matches the wider trend across other major crypto networks where fungible token trading volumes are exponentially larger than non-fungible (NFT) trading volumes.

NFTs

On the XRPL, NFTs are built into the core protocol and do not require smart contracts for creation or transfers, like Issued Currencies. NFTs were standardized by XLS-20 in October 2022, bringing benefits such as royalties and anti-spam features. These features help users not only avoid unwanted tokens but also help them stay legally compliant by avoiding specific tokens and smart contracts that have been made illegal within specific regions.

In June 2025, the DynamicNFT amendment (XLS-46) was enabled, adding functionality for mutable NFTs via a new transaction type called NFTokenModify, which modifies an NFT’s metadata after its creation. This broadens use cases for NFTs on the XRPL beyond immutable art or collectibles to gaming (in-game assets can gain new abilities), identity (identity tokens can update information), smart ticketing (event tickets can reflect status changes), and more.

In Q4, average daily NFT transactions declined 86.6% QoQ from 76,100 to 10,200, driven by a 96.8% QoQ decline in average daily NFT mint transactions from 64,600 to 2,100. Historically, average daily NFT mint transactions have fluctuated greatly from quarter to quarter. For example, average daily NFT mint transactions in Q4 2024 were 19,900, followed by 3,400 in Q1 2025, and 37,800 in Q2 2025.

In Q4, NFTTokenCreateOffer was the most common transaction type due to the decline in NFT mint transactions. As of the end of Q4, nearly 19 million NFTs have been minted with the XLS-20 standard. Notably, 4.2 million of those mints came in Q3’25, and 3.4 million in Q2’25.

Stablecoins and Wrapped Assets

Ripple’s USD-pegged stablecoin RLUSD closed Q3 with a combined market cap of $1.28 billion on the XRPL and Ethereum. RLUSD closed Q4 with a market cap of $234.9 million on the XRPL (+164.2% QoQ), making it the network’s largest stablecoin.

Behind RLUSD and Bitstamp BTC (referenced above), the top stablecoins and wrapped tokens on the XRPL by market cap at the close of Q4 were as follows:

• USDC: $6.4 million market cap (+5.6% QoQ) and 1,580 holders (+41.3% QoQ)
• Ripple Fox CNY: $5.8 million market cap (-12.8% QoQ) and 11,760 holders (-1.1% QoQ)
• Gatehub USD: $3.8 million market cap (-2.1% QoQ) and 20,290 holders (+0.1% QoQ)
• Bitstamp USD: $2.9 million market cap (+8.7% QoQ) and 7,340 holders (+0.2%)
• Ripple Fox XLM: $2.3 million market cap (-4.2% QoQ) and 1,810 holders (+2.9)

Historically, stablecoins on XRPL have not seen the adoption of major stablecoins on other networks. For example, Ethereum, TRON, Solana, and BNB Smart Chain closed Q4 with stablecoin market caps of $169.8 billion, $81.2 billion, $13.4 billion, and $12.8 billion, respectively. For added context, USDT and USDC closed Q4 with market caps of $186.8 billion (+6.9% QoQ) and $75.4 billion (+2.7% QoQ) across all networks on which they are supported.

However, in light of increased regulatory clarity from developments such as the passage of the GENIUS Act in the U.S. in July, many stablecoin issuers have announced plans to launch, or have already launched, stablecoins on the XRPL.

In October, stablecoin infrastructure platform Brale integrated the XRPL for business to issue, manage, and settle regulated USD-backed stablecoins on the network via its API. In June 2025, Circle’s USDC, pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar and fully backed by cash and cash equivalents, launched on the XRPL. In May, digital payment infrastructure provider StraitsX launched XSGD, its Singapore dollar-backed stablecoin, while Schuman Financial’s fully euro-backed and redeemable EURØP became the first MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin on the XRP Ledger. Additionally, Braza Group launched USDB, pegged 1:1 to the U.S. Dollar and backed fully by U.S. and Brazilian government bonds, and BBRL, pegged to the Brazilian Real. SG-Forge also plans to launch its EURCV stablecoin.

A key value proposition for all regulatorily compliant assets on the XRPL, like stablecoins, is the network’s built-in compliance features. For example, token issuers can enable Clawback, which allows the issuer to recover issued tokens from an account. This enables the token issuer to have the same capacity to recover funds as a legacy financial institution if a regulator ordered them to do so. Moreover, Deep Freeze, enabled in May, allows issuers to prohibit an account from both sending and receiving a token that it has issued. These ongoing updates to make DeFi regulatory-compliant at the base level make the XRPL increasingly attractive to institutions.

Other notable updates for RLUSD in Q4 included:

• Gemini added support for RLUSD on the XRPL.
• Ripple announced RLUSD will launch on Ethereum Layer 2 networks Optimism, Base, Ink, and Unichain in Q1 2026 via Wormhole’s NTT token standard.
• RLUSD was recognized as an Accepted Fiat-Referenced Token by Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), representing a significant step in establishing Ripple’s stablecoin as a trusted, compliant settlement asset in the Middle East.
• Ripple extended its University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) with $1.5 million in renewed university partnerships funded in RLUSD.

RWAs

The XRPL closed Q4 with a distributed real-world asset (RWA) market cap of $281.2 million, up 37.2% QoQ from $204.9 million. Messari only counts distributed RWAs that can be held directly onchain by investors in RWA market cap, and excludes represented RWAs, which acts as a record-keeping layer without enabling onchain investor transfer or distributions. Notably, distributed RWA market cap excludes non-yield-bearing stablecoins and "represented" RWAs, which only use the XRPL as a recordkeeping layer. To date, 81 RWAs (excluding stablecoins) are tracked by RWA.xyz on the XRPL, though more integrations are planned. Top distributed RWAs by market cap issued include:

• OpenEden U.S. Treasury Bill Vault (TBILL): TBILL invests deposits in short-dated U.S. Treasury bills and reverse repurchase agreements collateralized by US Treasuries. TBILL tokens can be minted from stablecoins, including RLUSD, and accrue interest earned proportionately. TBILL closed Q4 with a $61.5 million market cap (-26.5% QoQ) all held by Ripple, which initially invested $5 million and has committed to allocate a total of $10 million.
• Montis Group Limited (MGL): UK-regulated Archax provides access to a number of RWAs for professional investors on the XRPL, including tokenized stock of market infrastructure service provider Montis Group Limited (MGL), and UK asset manager abrdn’s £3.8 billion LUX money market fund via AAULF (US Dollar Fund) and AAELF (Euro fund).
• Ondo Short-Term US Government Bond Fund (OUSG): Ondo’s OUSG tokenized treasury fund. Qualified Purchasers and institutions can convert in and out of OUSG using RLUSD.
• Digital Commercial Paper (DCP): DCP is a fixed-income asset secured by US Treasuries. It is administered by Guggenheim Treasury Services and issued and managed by Zeconomy.
• abrdn Liquidity Fund (Lux) – US Dollar Fund (AAULF): AAULF invests deposits primarily in short-dated U.S. treasury bills and similar money market instruments to match the returns of the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR).

Outside of distributed RWAs, VERT, a leading securitization and fund management firm in Brazil, has launched a platform on the XRPL for managing private credit operations via represented RWAs, which use the XRPL as a recordkeeping layer. The platform records lifecycle events, documentation, and payments directly onchain, enabling near-real-time auditability while complying fully with Brazilian securities regulations.

The first live transaction was a $130 million Agribusiness Receivables Certificate (CRA). This 94th CRA issuance of future cash flows consists of five tranches backed by private financial notes from Banco ABC Brazil, split into senior and subordinated classes, with maturities from February 2026 to February 2034.

In October 2025, VERT completed its second tokenized transaction, bringing Brazil’s first tokenized FIDC (BRVERTCRA468) backed by public-pension receivables (INSS), a highly diversified, low-risk asset class tied to government pension payments, to the XRPL.

Many other RWAs from around the world are being made available on XRPL. Ctrl Alt has issued seven tokenized real estate properties on the XRPL, using Ripple’s custody infrastructure to store tokenized property title deeds, as part of the Dubai Land Department’s real estate tokenization project. In July 2025, Mercado Bitcoin announced it will tokenize more than $200 million in permissioned RWAs, including fixed income and equity income instruments.

Licensing, Regulatory Compliance, and Ripple

Adjacent to RWAs, the XRPL has also been explored as a tool for other institutional products. Ripple is the leading company developing technologies to leverage the XRPL for institutional and government use cases. The company is focused on using XRP and the XRPL to drive its On-Demand Liquidity service, custody, and tokenization initiatives.

Proper licensing and regulatory compliance for providers like Ripple is necessary for institutional and government adoption. In August 2025, Ripple announced it was acquiring Rail, a stablecoin payments platform to integrate into Ripple Payments, which has more than 60 licenses to manage customer payment flows compliantly, using RLUSD and XRP. Ripple continues to gain regulatory approvals worldwide, notable of which in recent months include:

• The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted Ripple conditional approval in December for its application to establish Ripple National Trust Bank (RNTB), a U.S. federally supervised trust bank.
• The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) approved in December an expanded scope of payment activities for the Major Payment Institution (MPI) license held by Ripple’s Singapore subsidiary.
• The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) granted Ripple its Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence and Cryptoasset Registration in January to expand its licenced payments platform, giving UK institutions the ability to send cross-border payments via digital assets through Ripple Payments.

In total Ripple made four major acquisitions in 2025, raised new funding, and continues to release new products as part of its vision to become the one-stop infrastructure shop for real-time global finance. In October, Ripple:

• Closed its acquisition of prime brokerage Hidden Road (now Ripple Prime), making it the first crypto company to own and operate a global, multi-asset prime broker. Hidden Road will receive capital from Ripple to scale operations and expand market capacity. The company is migrating its post-trade operations to the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and adopting Ripple’s USD-backed stablecoin, RLUSD, as collateral across its brokerage services.
• Announced its $1 billion acquisition of treasury management system GTreasury.

In November, Ripple:

• Announced it had received $500 million in strategic investment led by Fortress and Citadel Securities, valuing the company at $40 billion.
• Launched a digital asset prime brokerage in the United States market for U.S.-based institutional clients to execute OTC spot transactions across prominent digital assets like XRP and RLUSD.
• Acquired digital asset wallet and custody company Palisade to expand Ripple’s custody capabilities.
• Hosted its annual Swell conference in New York City.

Partnerships with institutions are also crucial to increasing adoption, recent of which include:

• Humanitarian organizations including World Central Kitchen, Water.org, GiveDirectly, and Mercy Corps, leveraging Ripple Payments, and RLUSD for aid delivery and funding.
• In October, Ripple announced a strategic partnership with Bahrain’s leading fintech incubator Bahrain Fintech Bay (BFB) to accelerate blockchain and digital asset adoption in the country.
• Also in October, Ripple announced a strategic partnership with Absa bank to provide its digital asset custody technology to the bank’s customers in South Africa.

In September, Ripple announced an agreement with Spanish bank BBVA to provide its digital asset custody technology.

Sidechains

Multiple sidechains for the XRPL are either in development or were recently launched. Though a development timeline to introduce native smart contracts was announced in February 2025, to date, the XRPL has maintained minimal L1 complexity, offering increased programmability for both general and specific use cases on sidechains.

XRPL EVM Sidechain

The XRPL EVM Sidechain developed by Peersyst went live on June 30, 2025, providing the XRPL ecosystem access to EVM developers and functionality, with a general-purpose scope. XRP is the sidechain’s native token. It was built with the Cosmos SDK, specifically the Cosmos EVM, after completing a migration from Evmos on Sept. 25, and connects to the XRPL via the XRPL-EVM bridge by Axelar and interoperability protocol Wormhole. Crosschain transfers can currently be completed via Squid, while Grove is the sidechain’s first external RPC provider.

Coreum

Coreum (CORE) is an enterprise-grade L1 focused on interoperability and scalability. Coreum runs a WASM VM and is secured by a Bonded Proof-of-Stake (BPoS) consensus mechanism. CORE is used for transaction fees, staking, and validator rewards on Coreum.

Coreum was built by the Sologenic team to service user needs that could not be efficiently managed on the XRPL. The network's initial focus is on providing security tokenization, such as tokenized stocks from the NYSE and synthetic assets. Coreum is IBC integrated, granting access to all IBC-connected networks such as Cosmos Hub, Ethereum, and BNB Smart Chain. This integration has, by extension, brought interoperability with other networks, such as Solana, via Coreum's integration with Picasso Network.

Coreum’s V5 upgrade in April 2025 introduced its native orderbook DEX to mainnet. Its CruiseControl interface then launched on Aug. 1, 2025, with support for token launches, staking, and trading. This was followed by the first RWA minted under its tokenization framework, a $25 million VC fund in El Salvador. Users can transfer between Coreum and the XRPL via the noncustodial Sologenic bridge.

Root Network

The Root Network sidechain is a blockchain-based NFT system with a focus on UX and metaverse. It was previously run by Futureverse, with the community beginning to organize governance in Q4 2025. The Root Network is live in alpha, along with its bridge to XRPL and Ethereum, which was upgraded in September 2024 to allow two-way bridging of any token between the XRPL and The Root Network. Yield platform Doppler Finance is capitalizing on this development as it works towards releasing a lending protocol on The Root Network and a liquid staking token (LST) for the network’s native token ROOT.

Built from a Substrate fork, the Root Network uses XRP as the default gas token and has EVM support for smart contracts. The Root Network uses a delegated-Proof-of-Stake (dPoS) consensus mechanism (via the ROOT token). The protocol’s roadmap items are aligned with the XRPL, seeking to integrate the XLS-20 NFT standard and source liquidity from the XRPL DEX. Root Network’s FuturePass account abstraction solution provides users with a familiar Web2 experience with social recovery, management of assets, and increased wallet flexibility.

Governance

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) uses an offchain governance process that allows community members and organizations to propose changes to the network. Users can submit proposals, otherwise known as Amendments, to the “XRPL-Standards” repository on the project’s GitHub. Notably, specifications were released in August to formalize this process by clarifying categories of standards, defining their life cycles, and establishing editorial responsibilities.

Block-producing validators on the network can then run versions of the XRPL source code that implement the proposed amendments. If 80% or more of the block-producing validators support the amended source code for two weeks, then it is implemented as the new source code for the network. Validators that do not support the amended source code are then blocked from contributing to consensus until they update to the newly changed version.

Recent notable approved amendments include Multipurpose Tokens V1 (October 2025), Credentials (September 2025), AMM Clawback (January 2025), DynamicNFT (June 2025), Deep Freeze (May 2025), and Decentralized Identity (October 2024). Together, these features, along with additional ones discussed below, make the XRPL fit for institutional adoption by providing necessary identity, financial, compliance, and privacy features.

The Multi-purpose token (MPT) standard enables support for metadata to store parameters regarding an issued RWA, such as the maturity date of a tokenized bond, tranches, or transfer restrictions. Like other XLS implementations, this standard is built directly into the protocol, allowing institutional issuers to avoid frictions like security audits or bespoke contract logic that come with custom implementations.

Capabilities provided by MPT include KYC/AML authorization and allowlists, issuer-defined transfer rules and restrictions, freeze and clawback functions, onchain metadata for reporting and disclosure, and multi-signature delegated key management. Financial technology platform Fortstock is one of the first to make use of MPTs, using them to transform warehouse inventory into institutional-grade financial instruments. Other examples include LiCuido (Money Market Funds) and Centigrade (Carbon Credits). Confidential MPTs that make use of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are also in development and scheduled for launch in Q1 2026. These tokens will support privacy-preserving collateral management for token amounts (not the accounts themselves), a requirement for institutional adoption for use cases like onchain collateral repurchase agreements of fixed-income assets like Treasury bonds.

Decentralized Identity (DID) enables verifiable, self-sovereign digital identities on the XRPL for use cases in compliance, access control, digital signatures, and secure transactions. Credentials builds on DID as a framework for issuing, managing, and verifying user credentials directly on the XRP Ledger. This standard introduces a new ‘Credential’ ledger object along with new transaction types for creating, accepting, and deleting credentials. Credentials enabled by DID are essential for regulatorily compliant institutions, which require KYC and AML compliance to control access to tokenized RWAs and securities, and trading and lending platforms. Credentials will enable permissioned domains, regulated DEXs, and compliant access to tokenized assets and lending markets as they come live on the XRPL.

Live proposals that have yet to be approved and build on the abovementioned compliance features include:

• Permissioned Domains (XLS-80): Scheduled to go live on Feb. 4, and building on Credentials, XLS-80 introduces Permissioned Domains, allowing entities, such as institutions, to require specific credentials to access their offerings on the XRPL. This includes Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. Notably, user privacy is maintained by verifying credentials without exposing personal information.
• Permissioned DEX (XLS-81): Ensures that only accounts with valid credentials can create or fill orders on a permissioned domain, allowing institutions to adhere to regulatory requirements such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and KYC rules for key use cases such as foreign exchange (FX).
• Lending Protocol (XLS-66): A native lending protocol, whereby users could lend and borrow supported assets, such as XRP, wBTC, and wETH, using single-asset vaults. Unlike overcollateralized lending protocols like Aave, the protocol is intended to offer onchain fixed-term and rate loans via offchain underwriting, risk management, third-party custody of collateral, and an insurance fund — a model akin to that implemented by Credix, Maple Finance, GoldFinch, and TrueFi. In preparation, Ripple is hosting a $200,000 “Attackathon” with Immunefi to test the upcoming protocol.
• Single Asset Vault (XLS-65): Modeled after the ERC-4626 vault standard on Ethereum, the single-asset vault will use credentials and permissioned domains for access control and support a number of compliance features, including account freezing, asset freezing, and clawback.

Additionally, Batch Transactions (XLS-56) is pending approval and enables grouping multiple actions into a single atomic transaction. This proposal would enable up to eight actions per batch transaction. For example, a user could submit up to eight offers for an asset at different prices, with different amounts of slippage, and where only the first successful offer succeeds.

Permission Delegation (XLS-75) was pending approval in Q3, and if approved, would have enabled account holders to delegate specific permissions to other accounts for flexible account management and automation. However, the proposal was deprecated after a vulnerability was discovered on devnet that allowed an account to charge transaction fees to any other account and could have been maliciously used to drain an account’s XRP balance. A replacement proposal ‘featurePermissionDelegationV1_1’ will be introduced to replace it.

XRPL Community Support Programs

The XRPL is supported by a number of community support programs funded by Ripple’s commitment of 1 billion XRP in March 2022. These programs include the XRPL grants program established in May 2021 to support development on the XRPL and the XRPL Accelerator program, an accelerator for new and existing XRPL ecosystem projects. Other community support programs include XRPL Hackathons and the Aquarium Residency for developers offered by XRPL Commons. The RippleX Bug Bounty Program also pays bounties to individuals or groups that identify and report bugs in the rippled, xrpl.js, xrpl-py, and xrpl4j repositories.

The seventh cohort of the 12-week-long XRPL Accelerator completed in Singapore in November, where it will run twice annually moving forward. The program is offered by Ripple Labs in partnership with Tenity, which in December 2024 announced its Tenity Inc Fund II to fund early-stage builders on the XRPL in Asia and Europe.

Closing Summary

Q4 2025 was filled with milestones for the XRPL, none greater than U.S. spot XRP ETFs launching in November 2025, reaching $1 billion in AUM in less than four weeks, the fastest to do so since ETH. The offering significantly expands U.S access to XRP for investors previously limited by custody and compliance barriers.

Amidst this TradFi momentum, the XRPL, the XRPL continues to be primed for institutional adoption, as necessary identity, financial, compliance, and privacy features have/are being implemented. These include multipurpose tokens (MPTs) with metadata to store RWA parameters, a native lending protocol, confidential MPTs using Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), and credentials to control access via KYC/AML. Moreover, Permissioned Domains (XLS-80) is scheduled to go live in February and builds on Credentials, allowing entities, such as institutions, to require specific credentials that can include Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements to access their offerings on the XRPL. Finally, amendments for the native lending protocol and single asset vaults have been released for voting.

Still, without all these features yet live, RWA and stablecoin issuance on the XRPL continue to make all-time highs. The XRPL closed 2025 with an all-time high RWA market cap of $213.2 million (+4% QoQ) as issuance grew for RWAs like Ondo’s OUSG tokenized treasury fund, Guggenheim’s Digital Commercial Paper, and tokenized real estate issued by Ctrl Alt. Additionally, Ripple’s USD-pegged stablecoin RLUSD closed 2025 with a market cap of $234.9 million on the XRPL (+164% QoQ), making it the network’s largest stablecoin.

As amendments to enable regulatory-compliant institutional DeFi on the network continue to be adopted, the XRPL is poised for exciting new use cases to drive both organic institutional adoption and new strategic partnerships alike in 2026.