For more than a decade, the blockchain industry was busy proving that our technology works: that a decentralized ledger could be secure, reliable, scalable, and capable of carrying real economic activity. Increasingly, the question is becoming more practical: what are we building with it?
This is an important shift. It does not necessarily come with a market boom or a new wave of hype, because utility is rarely spectacular. It grows through steady progress: a new payment rail, an asset brought on-chain, a financial institution integrating blockchain infrastructure, a developer solving a problem that had no solution before.
The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is the clearest example. Fourteen years of continuous operation. Around $5 billion of real-world assets are issued and represented on it to date, which puts the XRPL in the top ten networks for tokenized assets, and its stablecoin market has passed $1.1 billion. We are seeing tokenized gold, real estate, and lending protocols, alongside applications using the protocol to move value for individuals and businesses.
In Europe, the ECB is building Pontes to connect DLT platforms with existing payment systems, and Appia to explore the longer-term infrastructure and legal frameworks for tokenized financial markets. Blockchain is increasingly being considered a financial market infrastructure. This is where we see some of the most interesting developments happening.
Dubai’s Land Registry has been tokenizing real estate on the XRPL since 2025. Fractional ownership lowers the barriers to accessing real estate, while clearer and more transparent records raise trust in the public institution that keeps them.
In the same spirit, Aviva and Ripple recently partnered to tokenize a money market fund where XRPL functions as the issuance and record-keeping infrastructure.
Stablecoins are another example. In Latam, people are using them to access dollar-denominated value in response to local economic conditions. In Europe, we work with stablecoin issuers, including Schuman Financial and Société Générale, whose MiCA-compliant stablecoins EURØP and EURCV are widening what a regulated euro instrument can do on a public ledger.
These are very different use cases, but they share can important characteristic: the technology is blending in the background while real problems are being solved. The most important measure of adoption is not how many people know they are using a blockchain; it is how many people benefit from one without ever having to think about it.
That has been the principle behind XRPL Commons from the start: technology in the service of people. It means teaching people to build, then connecting what they can build to problems worth solving.
The XRPL has entered a new stage of its own. Some of the people who shaped its early years have stepped back - I salute you, Captain Schwartz - and a new generation of bright developers has joined our ecosystem to build XRPL’s new features, expand its applications, and maintain its infrastructure. We welcome them and look forward to their future contributions.
The opportunity now is to ask better questions: What are the projects we want to build at scale? What problems are worth solving? For me, this is what the current moment represents: A trove of opportunities for the capable and willing!
That is the perspective behind this edition of the XRPL Community Magazine. We wanted to look at utility in practice, from tokenized gold with PhiWallet in EMEA and stablecoins in Argentina, to lending through VS1 Finance, reforming agricultural supply chains with Weia, and other emerging applications. We showcase the variety of ways the XRPL can be used by individuals, companies, and society more broadly. We also look at the broader technological changes around us, including the emergence of Agentic Payments, and how these developments intersect with blockchain infrastructure.
The examples in this edition are only a selection of what is being developed. Together, they reflect a broader transition: if you know Gartner’s hype cycle, I think blockchain has entered the Plateau of Productivity.
It’s up to you how you’ll contribute. If you want to enter the space, we are here to help. ●
Interested in reading the magazine? Check it out on our website.
