The cryptocurrency world is abuzz with the rapid rise of XRP’s spot Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in the United States. With four such products now trading, their combined assets under management (AUM) rapidly approached $942 million by December 18. This swift growth, from approximately $336 million at their launch in November, clearly signals significant regulated US demand. Yet, amidst this excitement, a much larger, quieter story unfolds beneath the surface: the robust and expanding payment and infrastructure layer powered by XRP.
The critical question for XRP is not just whether its ETF products can attract investment, but whether the asset possesses durable demand rooted in real-world utility, particularly in cross-border financial flows, stablecoin rails, and persistent liquidity. While ETF exposure is measurable, it pales in comparison to the $15 billion in Ripple's On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) processed in 2024 alone. This highlights that the true measure of XRP's adoption lies in its underlying infrastructure; when ETF flows eventually normalize, the answers about genuine adoption will emerge from the network's plumbing, not from financial tickers.
RippleNet's Global Reach and the Power of ODL
RippleNet, Ripple’s global payments network, has become a formidable force, connecting more than 300 financial institutions across over 55 countries. Crucially, approximately 40% of these partners are actively utilizing XRP for ODL, leveraging the digital asset for efficient cross-border settlements beyond mere messaging rails. In 2024, ODL successfully processed over $15 billion in cross-border payments, marking a substantial 32% year-over-year increase. The Asia-Pacific region emerged as a dominant hub, accounting for roughly 56% of this impressive volume. Today, ODL extends across more than 70 corridor pairs, covering an estimated 80% of major global remittance corridors. Projections from DAS Research even forecast ODL volume reaching about $1.3 billion in the second quarter of 2025 alone, underscoring Ripple's strategic push to establish XRP as a core payments infrastructure.
It’s important to distinguish between the broader RippleNet, which processes over $15 billion in cross-border transactions monthly (including fiat-only settlements), and ODL, which specifically utilizes XRP. XRP enters the picture where the benefits of reduced pre-funding costs and tighter FX spreads outweigh the volatility risk associated with a digital asset. Therefore, the key metrics for assessing real adoption are ODL volume, the expanding corridor coverage, and the growing share of RippleNet partners actively routing traffic through XRP.
“Even $30 billion in annual ODL volume is meaningful for XRP but marginal for global payments. Real adoption on this axis would look like ODL volumes compounding from the current $15 billion and the baseline, more than half of RippleNet clients opting into XRP, and corridor expansion beyond the APAC remittance niches that dominate today.”
XRPL's On-Chain Activity: Beyond Speculation
The XRP Ledger (XRPL) itself demonstrates robust on-chain activity that extends far beyond speculative trading. In the third quarter of 2025, XRPL handled approximately 1.8 million transactions per day, a roughly 9% quarter-on-quarter increase, with typical finality achieved in a swift 3 to 5 seconds. Average daily active sender addresses reached about 25,300, and a significant 447,200 new addresses were created during the quarter, bringing the total to approximately 6.9 million. Weekly payment counts have surged by roughly 430% compared to 2023 levels, with payments consistently remaining the dominant use case. In the third quarter of 2025, "payment" transactions constituted about 55.7% of total activity, with daily payment counts hovering around 989,600.
Adding further weight to XRPL’s utility is its burgeoning Real-World Asset (RWA) market. The tokenized RWA market cap on XRPL reached $347 million by the end of the third quarter, experiencing a remarkable 193% quarter-on-quarter increase. This growth was fueled by assets such as US Treasury funds like Ondo’s OUSG, commercial paper, and real estate tokens. Overall, XRPL's tokenized asset market value expanded from near zero in early 2025 to over $400 million by December, largely driven by stablecoins and RWAs.
Ripple's own stablecoin, RLUSD, launched in December 2024 across both XRPL and Ethereum, quickly achieving a total supply of $1.3 billion. On XRPL specifically, RLUSD held a market cap of approximately $293 million, up by 41% in the preceding 30 days. While RLUSD is now a billion-plus-dollar asset with a material presence on XRPL, its overall footprint remains modest when contrasted with giants like USDT and USDC on other chains. True, durable on-chain adoption for XRPL will mean payment transactions continuing to grow, RWA capitalization and RLUSD usage expanding on XRPL itself (rather than migrating away), and active addresses consistently increasing, independent of price fluctuations.
Robust Liquidity and Institutional Standing
XRP’s position as a top-tier asset is further solidified by its liquidity profile. Kaiko’s crypto asset ranking for the third quarter of 2025 placed XRP in an impressive tie with Ethereum for second place, achieving an AA score of 95 out of 100. This score reflects full marks for liquidity, market depth, exchange availability, institutional adoption, and derivatives maturity, putting it on par with Bitcoin in many key aspects. Average daily trading volume for XRP stood at approximately $1.73 billion in early 2025, representing a 22% year-over-year increase. This indicates that market makers treat XRP not as a fringe altcoin, but as a significant player, irrespective of ETF headlines.
On the decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) layers within XRPL, activity is also growing. Average daily Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) volume for fungible issued currencies was about $7.9 million in the third quarter, with around 1 million CLOB trades. Additionally, average daily AMM volume reached about $1.7 million. While these figures are smaller than those on centralized venues, they highlight the evolving, more composable liquidity structure of XRPL, which includes deep off-chain order books alongside its developing on-ledger capabilities with AMMs, oracles, and upcoming smart contract extensions.
The True Test of Durable Demand
Let's consider a scenario where XRP ETF AUM stabilizes around $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion. What would need to happen over the next 12 to 24 months for XRP’s demand to be unequivocally deemed "durable" rather than primarily ETF-driven?
- Sustained ODL Growth: First, ODL volumes and corridor coverage must continue their upward trajectory from the $15 billion registered in 2024 and the 70-plus corridor pairs. This means annual ODL volume needs to consistently step into the tens of billions, more than half of RippleNet clients should opt into XRP rather than fiat-only rails, and corridor expansion must translate into disclosed volumes, moving beyond pilot phases.
- Robust On-Chain Metrics: Second, XRPL's on-chain payments base, currently at roughly 1.8 million daily transactions and 6.9 million addresses, needs to continue rising. A truly durable adoption story will see these curves sloping upwards even if price and ETF flows remain flat: more payment transactions, more active addresses, increased RWA issuance, and robust RLUSD volume specifically on XRPL. As of December 19, RLUSD’s $293 million supply on XRPL represented about 21.93% of total issuance; its XRPL share needs to grow significantly.
- Consistent Liquidity Quality: Third, the quality of XRP’s liquidity must hold up. Kaiko’s AA, 95/100 profile already places XRP’s depth and derivative structure on par with Ethereum. The real test in a stagnation scenario is whether order-book depth, bid-ask spreads, and open interest remain robust when ETF net flows normalize. If they do, it strongly suggests a fundamental base of market-maker and corridor-driven demand that isn't merely chasing ETF narratives.
- Scaling RLUSD and RWAs on XRPL: Fourth, RLUSD and tokenized assets on XRPL need to grow from a few hundred million in RWA market cap and the approximately $88.8 million of RLUSD on XRPL into genuinely system-level collateral. They must become significant players in their own right, rather than remaining a sidecar to the much larger Ethereum DeFi ecosystem.
If these four critical developments materialize while ETF AUM remains flat, it will be clear that XRP adoption is genuine. In such a scenario, ETF products would simply serve as another access channel to an asset whose demand is deeply anchored in cross-border flows, stablecoin rails, tokenized treasuries, and resilient liquidity. However, if ODL volumes stall, payment and address metrics reverse, RWA and RLUSD growth shift predominantly to other ledgers, and liquidity scores decline once ETF inflows cool, the honest conclusion would be that the 2025-26 XRP narrative was largely driven by ETFs, rather than structural, enduring demand. Ultimately, the plumbing of the network, not the tickers on an exchange, will deliver the definitive verdict.
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