Despite XRP falling sharply from its mid-2025 peak, activity from institutions and developers on the XRP Ledger remains resilient, according to Odelia Torteman, head of digital assets at XRPL Commons.
She believes expanding enterprise use, real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation and new lending functions could create more sustainable demand for XRP.
XRP’s rally to an all-time high in mid-2025 followed Ripple Labs’ favourable court decision in 2023 and wider regulatory support during the pro-crypto Trump administration. Since then, however, interest from retail and institutional investors has weakened, even as Ripple continues to pursue enterprise partnerships to expand XRP’s role in cross-border payments.
The token suffered a significant pullback in recent months and fell below the $1 support level in August this year. Its subdued price performance has not been matched by activity on the XRP Ledger, where institutional and developer engagement remains steady. Continued use by major financial groups, including Japan’s SBI Group, has also highlighted the protocol’s longer-term relevance.
XRP’s role in institutional finance
Torteman said the XRP Ledger’s native design allows it to meet several institutional requirements directly onchain. Multi-purpose tokens, permissioned domains and a permissioned decentralised exchange (DEX) are among the features intended to support enterprise applications.
“Accounts, and the objects they own on the ledger, such as trust lines, offers or escrows, require an XRP reserve. As the number of accounts and assets grows, so does the amount of XRP held for this purpose,” Torteman told Bitcoin.com News.
She added that XRP is also used as a bridge asset for liquidity across DEX routing and automated market maker pools.
Torteman described the ledger’s development as part of a move towards 24-hour, compliance-grade settlement infrastructure for digital finance. She identified RWA tokenisation and stablecoin issuance as important areas as traditional finance and digital assets converge in what she called “institutional DeFi”.
The XRP Ledger is among the top three chains for RWAs. Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, has passed $2 billion in market capitalisation, with more than half of that supply hosted on the XRPL.
“The next stage is credit on chain,” Torteman said. Pending activations, including the Lending Protocol and Single Asset Vaults, are expected to support underwritten, fixed-term credit structures familiar to institutional investors.
“This is how a tokenised treasury becomes collateral, collateral becomes credit, and credit becomes structured yield, all on the same rail,” she added.
Cross-chain connections are another potential source of growth. The XRP Ledger has been integrated into LOBSTR, a wallet in the Stellar ecosystem, linking two payment-focused networks.
The first phase is live on iOS and Android, allowing users to manage XRPL accounts, trade tokens on the native DEX, swap XRP across chains and use fiat on-ramps for RLUSD. Torteman said value is already moving between the two ecosystems, with a second phase expected to broaden DeFi integrations and asset flows.
XRPL Commons is also organising a New York hackathon with AWS, Mastercard, Ledger and Quicknode. Its four tracks will cover agentic finance, lending and borrowing, native protocol development and open innovation.
Winning teams will receive technical mentorship, introductions to partners and access to startup programmes. Torteman said six teams from an earlier Paris buildathon had already launched businesses and entered XRPL startup pipelines.
The XRP Ledger is due to receive a software upgrade on Oct. 23 to fix a security flaw.
