Major

Franklin

2026

DeFi

<p>Research firm <a href="https://x.com/MessariCrypto" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">@MessariCrypto</a>'s latest State of XRP Ledger report for Q1 2026 puts hard numbers behind the XRPL's institutional-DeFi story, showing broad-based growth across real-world assets, stablecoin supply, and on-chain activity.</p>
<h2 id="rwa-base-climbs-to-2-25-billion">RWA base climbs to $2.25 billion</h2>
<p>Real-world assets on the ledger jumped 124% quarter-over-quarter to $2.25 billion, closing Q1 as the seventh largest RWA base of any blockchain network. The ranking has since improved further, moving to fourth. The trajectory marks a sharp acceleration from <cite>the $281.2 million recorded at the end of Q4 2024, when XRPL closed that quarter with a distributed RWA market cap up 37.2% from $204.9 million the prior quarter.</cite> The growth reflects a broader surge in tokenized asset issuance on the ledger, <cite>driven by the issuance growth of assets such as Ondo's OUSG tokenized treasury fund, Guggenheim's Digital Commercial Paper, and tokenized real estate.</cite></p>
<p><a href="https://x.com/Ripple" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">@Ripple</a>'s RLUSD stablecoin grew 45% to $340.3 million on-chain in Q1, making it the ledger's largest stablecoin. That follows a strong Q4 2025, <cite>when RLUSD's market cap on the ledger rose 164.2% quarter-over-quarter to hit $234.9 million.</cite> The stablecoin's growth reflects a push by Ripple to position RLUSD as a core settlement layer for institutional flows. <cite>Ripple and XRPL contributors are positioning the XRP Ledger as an institutional DeFi platform by combining compliance-focused infrastructure with XRP's role as a settlement and bridge asset, with features including permissioned domains, credential-based access, privacy-preserving transfers, and the XLS-65/66 lending protocol designed to meet regulatory and risk-management requirements.</cite></p>
<h2 id="transaction-volumes-and-etf-holdings">Transaction volumes and ETF holdings</h2>
<p>Network activity rose alongside asset growth. Average daily transactions climbed 35% to 2.48 million in Q1, continuing a trend that has built steadily over recent quarters. <cite>Daily payments hit 2.7 million, a 12-month high,</cite> partially driven by RWA tokenization activity.</p>
<p>US spot <a href="https://x.com/search?q=%24XRP&amp;src=cashtag_click" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">$XRP</a> ETF holdings edged up 1.9% to 775.4 million $XRP, representing roughly 1.3% of circulating supply, though that remains below the 810.2 million peak recorded on March 3. <cite>Major US spot ETFs launched in Q4 2025, with asset managers including Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, Bitwise, and 21Shares among those offering pure spot XRP products in the US.</cite></p>
<p><a href="https://x.com/MessariCrypto" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">@MessariCrypto</a> credits XRPL's expanding institutional feature set, spanning compliance tooling to tokenization infrastructure, for pushing more activity through the chain. <cite>The XRP Ledger has evolved into a high-performance blockchain for tokenized finance, with compliance tooling, real-time settlement, and asset-layer programmability now live on mainnet.</cite></p>
<p><strong>Sources:</strong><br><a href="https://messari.io/project/xrp-ledger/research" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Messari: XRP Ledger Research Reports</a><br><a href="https://thecryptobasic.com/2026/02/06/messari-q4-xrp-report-shows-rlusd-marketcap-on-xrpl-rose-164-2-as-adoption-grows/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">The Crypto Basic: Messari Q4 2025 XRP Ledger Report</a><br><a href="https://ripple.com/insights/institutional-defi-on-xrpl-scaling-real-world-finance-with-xrp-at-the-core/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Ripple: Institutional DeFi on XRPL</a></p>

XRPL's institutional-DEFI numbers climbed hard in Q1

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