Author: Peggy, BlockBeats
On June 12, the decentralized asset management platform Trident announced the launch of a financing plan for XRP treasury of up to $500 million and appointed Chaince Securities LLC as a strategic advisor.
Against the backdrop of waning retail enthusiasm and cooling community discussions, this news has attracted market attention: why are there still institutions choosing to allocate large amounts of XRP as on-chain reserve assets? Does this mean that the retail camp once referred to as 'XRP Army' is gradually being replaced by institutional funds?
XRP is one of the earliest blockchain projects to enter the public eye, but it has long borne labels such as 'centralized', 'entangled in lawsuits', and 'lack of innovation'. The tug-of-war lawsuit with the SEC has lasted five years, with slowed technological iteration and weak community participation, making it a representative of 'old era projects'. However, since 2024, XRP's ecosystem has quietly shifted: prices are once again approaching historical highs, XRPL is building infrastructure around sidechains, stablecoins, and DeFi modules, and institutional buying and development investments are gradually warming up. Although these changes are not loud, they are accumulating substantial progress across multiple indicators.
This is not a 'redemption' style narrative reversal, but a structural reconstruction completed with low attention. This article will observe how XRP navigates a 'path of neither explosive growth nor extinction' amidst controversy and silence, starting from fund movements, ecological evolution, and on-chain data.
Is XRP 'turning around'?
Strategic buying: Who is buying XRP?
Although mainstream narratives have yet to update, the choice of capital in the real world is providing another answer. Despite XRP's image as an 'old coin' in the crypto community still being present, the flow of funds in reality has quietly shifted.
In the past year, this project, long regarded as a 'centralized legacy', has not faded away. On the contrary, its price has remained stable around $2, maintaining a resilient stance during multiple rounds of market corrections. By the end of 2024, XRP's market capitalization once exceeded USDT, returning to the ranks of the top three cryptocurrencies globally; the on-chain TVL also grew from less than $10 million to over $40 million during the same period.
Meanwhile, a number of institutions have begun to reassess the asset attributes of XRP and include it in their mid to long-term allocation range. On May 30, Hong Kong tech firm Webus International launched a $300 million financing plan, using XRP for a global payment system. The next day, Nasdaq-listed energy firm VivoPower announced the completion of a $121 million private financing round, aimed at building an asset reserve mechanism centered on XRP, led by members of the Saudi royal family and Ripple ecosystem executives as advisors. On June 12, Trident DAO launched an XRP treasury plan with a cap of $500 million, integrating it into on-chain governance and asset-linked tools.
These real-world cases from the fields of energy, transportation, and Web3 finance indicate that enterprises' perceptions of XRP are no longer limited to controversial labels or market narratives, but are gradually seeing it as a viable option for 'low-volatility digital assets'. Especially with the SEC regulatory case nearing its conclusion and Ripple perfecting its compliance path, XRP's legal uncertainty has eased, while its characteristics of low transaction fees and high settlement efficiency align more closely with the needs of cross-border payments and financial allocation.
Although updates on the technical side are still in progress, these financial behaviors have already formed a non-emotional, mid-term planning-oriented asset selection logic. In other words, even if the community still has doubts, the other end of the market is already re-defining its value through action.
Ecological reconstruction: Is it no longer just a payment chain?
After being long defined as a 'cross-border payment channel', XRP's ecological structure is undergoing a systemic shift. Over the past year, Ripple has successively launched EVM-compatible sidechains, the US dollar stablecoin RLUSD, and initiated developer activities and payment infrastructure collaborations in multiple countries.
From its initial remittance network, Ripple is evolving into a multi-layered platform that encompasses payments, custody, stablecoins, and project incubation, aiming to provide a complete on-chain financial service stack for institutional clients. As its product structure continues to extend, a number of new protocols built around XRPL have emerged, introducing this traditional public chain into broader scenarios such as on-chain finance, yield management, and asset governance.
By the end of 2024, Ripple launched an EVM sidechain compatible with Ethereum, along with the launch of the RLUSD stablecoin and mainnet function updates, gradually expanding XRPL's infrastructure capabilities. These initiatives have allowed XRP to no longer be limited to payment use, but to possess the potential to support on-chain financial applications.
Based on these underlying updates, a new on-chain financial structure known as 'XRPFi' is beginning to take shape, with the core goal of injecting new on-chain utility into XRP against a backdrop of a lack of staking and yield mechanisms on the native XRPL chain. Among them, Doppler Finance is currently one of the most representative projects, adopting a dual-path architecture that runs parallel to custody and on-chain, providing yield products and asset management interfaces to coin holders. According to official data, the platform's current TVL exceeds $30 million, with funds running through compliant custody channels, supporting users to view asset flows and yield sources.
The dual path yield structure of Doppler Finance, source: official website
From a product structure perspective, Doppler's yield strategy mainly comes from two types of models:
One is structured arbitrage strategies (such as spot-perpetual arbitrage, cross-platform price-neutral arbitrage), focusing on 'net increase in XRP quantity' rather than pure dollar returns;
The CeDeFi yield structure of Doppler Finance
The second is to use XRP as collateral to obtain stablecoins, then deploy them into high liquidity DeFi protocols to achieve low-leverage, risk-controlled returns. At the same time, its platform supports staking returns on the Root Network, an upcoming XRPL lending protocol, and one-click staking leverage tools to lower the participation threshold for users.
The yield path structure of XRPfi in the on-chain ecosystem
In addition to Doppler, projects like OnXRP, Magnetic, and Anodos have also emerged on XRPL, focusing on AMM and lending. Some of these protocols are deployed on XRPL's EVM sidechain, while others leverage sidechains like Root Network for asset mapping. The entire XRPFi ecosystem has not taken the 'high TVL sprint' path but is gradually building a DeFi system that adapts to the XRP user structure through sidechain expansion, compliant interfaces, and incentive mechanisms.
According to DefiLlama data, as of June 2025, the on-chain TVL of XRPL has surpassed $40 million for the first time, with funds mainly coming from markets in South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, and parts of Europe.
From a path perspective, XRP is currently attempting a 'turn-around narrative' similar to that of Tron or Solana—shifting from a payment tool to the base of institutional financial protocols. However, unlike the latter two, XRPL has not abandoned its 'low-cost, high-certainty' compliance orientation, but instead maintains the main chain's streamlined structure while leveraging composable sidechains for expansion.
Although this 'technical layering + application division of labor' model has progressed slowly, it is building new application boundaries for XRP and forming an important foundation for the construction of the XRPFi ecosystem.
Not the protagonist, but still alive
Although the ecosystem is gradually expanding, the perception of XRP in mainstream communities remains stuck in outdated impressions. For many crypto-native users, XRP is still a project with 'lack of consensus'.
This emotional gap is particularly evident on social platforms. In the face of continuous good news, some users helplessly commented, 'Please stop the good news, the coin price has dropped again.' This sarcastic remark somewhat captures the current reality of the XRP community: continuous development, stagnant emotions; structural evolution, unresponsive market.
In summary, XRP may not become the narrative center again, nor is it necessarily suitable for short-term investors seeking explosive growth. But it continues to build, remains included in institutional financial systems, and still has developers constructing financial infrastructure here. In an industry where the average project lifecycle does not exceed five years, 'still alive' itself may be sufficiently rare and worthy of a second glance.
