Key Takeaways
- XRPL Commons’ Odelia Torteman cited $2B RLUSD market cap and top-3 RWA ranking as drivers of institutional adoption.
- XRPL Commons is partnering with AWS and Mastercard for its 2025 New York hackathon to incubate emerging startups.
- XRP briefly dipped under $1 in 2026, but institutional adoption from SBI Group reinforces its long-term viability.
Protocol Architecture Drives Core Demand
The convergence of Ripple Labs’ favorable 2023 court decision and the broader regulatory tailwinds of a pro-crypto Trump administration fueled a powerful bull run, propelling XRP to an all-time high in mid-2025. However, retail and institutional interest has since tapered off, standing in sharp contrast to Ripple’s aggressive pursuit of enterprise partnerships aimed at deepening XRP’s cross-border payments ecosystem.
In recent months, XRP experienced a marked pullback, breaching the $1 support level in August this year. Despite this price stagnation, developer and institutional engagement across the XRP Ledger remains resilient. Furthermore, continued adoption by major financial conglomerates, such as Japan’s SBI Group, underscores the long-term staying power of the protocol.
Addressing how this growing enterprise footprint translates into structural demand for XRP, Odelia Torteman, head of digital assets at XRPL Commons, highlighted the ledger’s native architecture. She noted that features such as multi-purpose tokens, permissioned domains, and a permissioned decentralized exchange (DEX) support institutional requirements directly onchain, with XRP playing a core functional role.
“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, adding that XRP also serves as a key bridge asset for liquidity across DEX routing and automated market maker pools.
Expanding on how emerging applications could generate durable demand, Torteman emphasized the ledger’s trajectory toward becoming a 24/7 compliance-grade settlement infrastructure for digital finance. As traditional finance and digital assets converge into “institutional DeFi,” she cited real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and stablecoin issuance as key drivers. The XRP Ledger ranks among the top three chains for RWAs, and Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, surpassed $2 billion in market capitalization, with over half hosted on the XRPL.
“The next stage is credit on chain,” Torteman explained, noting that pending protocol activations like the Lending Protocol and Single Asset Vaults will enable underwritten, fixed-term credit models familiar to institutional allocators. “This is how a tokenised treasury becomes collateral, collateral becomes credit, and credit becomes structured yield, all on the same rail.”
Expanding Ecosystem via Cross-Chain Interoperability
Meanwhile, beyond native protocol expansion, cross-chain connectivity is emerging as another catalyst for ecosystem growth. Torteman highlighted the integration of the XRP Ledger into LOBSTR, an established wallet in the Stellar ecosystem, connecting two major payment-focused networks.
With the first phase live on iOS and Android, users can manage XRPL accounts, trade tokens on the native DEX, swap XRP across chains, and access fiat on-ramps for RLUSD. Torteman noted that value is actively moving between the two ecosystems, laying the foundation for the second phase, which will expand DeFi integrations and asset flows.
To translate these onchain capabilities into viable commercial products, XRPL Commons is targeting practical developer execution at its upcoming New York hackathon. Organized alongside industry partners including AWS, Mastercard, Ledger, and Quicknode, the event focuses on four core tracks, namely agentic finance, lending and borrowing, native protocol development, and an open innovation track.
Addressing the challenge of turning hackathon prototypes into lasting ventures, Torteman noted that top teams will receive technical mentorship, partner introductions, and access to dedicated startup programs. She highlighted that six teams from a previous buildathon in Paris have already launched businesses and joined XRPL startup pipelines.
