Blockchain adoption inside large institutions remains uneven. Some organizations arrive with defined roadmaps and technical clarity, while others still try to understand what digital assets mean for regulated environments and internal governance. Transparency and decentralization often collide with corporate instincts built around control, permissioning, and legacy systems.
What XRPL Commons Does and How Corporate Adoption Works
XRPL Commons supports the adoption of the XRP Ledger by working across multiple layers of the ecosystem, from early-stage builders to large institutions, while operating across jurisdictions rather than focusing on a single market.
“We are based in Paris, but we operate globally, with the mission to support the adoption of the XRP Ledger across the different entities and personas that comprise this ecosystem,” Torteman said.
Its work extends beyond startups. XRPL Commons engages with technical teams, academic researchers, investors, and corporate actors through separate programs tailored to each group’s needs, rather than a single adoption framework.
The organization also plays an operational role within the network. By running a validator node on the XRP Ledger, XRPL Commons contributes directly to network reliability and long-term scalability.
“In my role working with corporates and industry players, the goal is basically to accompany these institutions on their journeys to explore the XRPL,” Torteman said.
That engagement typically begins with evaluation and design, then progresses through development and deployment when institutions decide to move forward. That work spans use case design, product development, implementation, and launch.
“For the more highly regulated industries and institutions, you need to ensure that you are in line with compliance and with risk” | Image source: Odelia Torteman
What Corporations Often Misunderstand About Blockchain Adoption
According to Torteman, corporates approach blockchain from very different starting points. “I think there’s a very wide spectrum,” she said. Some institutions arrive with clear roadmaps and technical requirements. Others begin with basic questions about digital assets, digital finance, and how the XRP Ledger functions. “For those just starting, the process starts from a discovery phase,” Torteman said. That phase focuses on business goals first. From there, XRPL Commons works with institutions to design solutions using existing ledger features and products already live on XRPL.
Education, Compliance, and the Pace of Institutional Adoption
Torteman explains that adoption moves slowly, not because institutions resist innovation, but because regulation and risk management shape every decision. “For the more highly regulated industries and institutions, you need to ensure that you are in line with compliance and with risk,” she said. That requirement extends timelines. Institutions must move through education, internal alignment, and operational planning before technical execution begins. Innovation models also differ widely. Some organizations create dedicated innovation units. Others rely on external partners. Some require initiatives to originate directly from business units. “Each one of those journeys is almost like a different flow,” Torteman said.
Financial Use Cases Built on the XRP Ledger
The XRP Ledger was designed with financial services in mind. “I think it was one of the first protocols that was built for the financial services, for banks to support the transfer of payments and of different types of assets,” Torteman said.
She points to features such as decentralized exchange (DEX) functionality, automated market makers (AMM), and compliance-oriented design choices. These features support stablecoin issuance and operation, asset tokenization and lending.
Torteman also highlights upcoming developments in native lending. “We have a very interesting upcoming innovation coming right around the XRPL native lending protocol,” she said. The upcoming XRPL Native Lending protocol supports under-collateralized lending using a single-asset vault architecture that aggregates liquidity from assets issued across the XRPL.
Bringing fixed-term, fixed-rate, underwritten credit directly into the XRP Ledger at the protocol level, the lending protocol aims to differentiate XRPL DeFi by addressing gaps in yield and institutional utility, balancing innovation with conservative risk management
Public Ledgers and Corporate Control: What Cannot Change
When discussing public versus private infrastructure, Torteman emphasizes fit over ideology. “Technological solutions offer a defined set of functionalities and features,” she said. Some use cases suit public ledgers, others do not. XRPL addresses institutional concerns through roadmap developments that preserve decentralization while enabling controlled participation.
“Upcoming amendments like permissioned DEXs and permissioned domains enable basically the different makers to define who can be part of this ecosystem,” Torteman said. Permissioned Domains (now activated) allow markets to gate participation based on defined credentials, creating user-controlled environments. Permissioned DEX, built on these primitives, extends XRPL’s battle-tested decentralized exchange into regulated contexts, enabling secondary markets for RWAs or FX with full AML/KYC controls. These tools allow institutions to operate in user-controlled environments while maintaining regulatory alignment.
Legacy Infrastructure and the Real Bottleneck
Drawing on her experience modernizing core banking systems, Torteman argues that technology alone does not solve institutional complexity. “The challenge from a technological perspective is solvable,” she said.
The larger challenge lies in operational design. Institutions must integrate decentralized systems into existing architectures without creating fragmented workflows.“You don’t want to have multiple systems which support different functions and do not interact with one another,” Torteman said. Interoperability initiatives aim to address this gap by enabling assets and liquidity to move across systems.
Why Corporate Culture Slows Blockchain Adoption
Asked whether technology or culture presents the bigger obstacle, Torteman does not hesitate. “In consulting, we always say culture eats technology for breakfast,” she said. Without alignment across leadership, operations, and business units, adoption struggles regardless of technical maturity. “If the organization is not in the right mindset… we will always have challenges,” she said.
Institutions and Smaller Participants in Blockchain Ecosystems
As institutional adoption grows, concerns arise about dominance by large players. Torteman views the landscape differently. “I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game,” she said. The equilibrium is DeFi as infrastructure, fintechs and banks as the interface. FinTech and banks bring distribution, licensing, and trust with regulators and end users; they translate raw DeFi primitives into products that pass compliance committees and work inside ERP and treasury systems. DeFi brings a programmable, always‑on settlement and liquidity layer- stablecoins, AMMs, lending pools, and tokenization rails that can be composed like APIs. Lower transaction costs and shared infrastructure create space for collaboration rather than displacement.
Gender, Leadership, and Credibility in Blockchain
Blockchain leadership remains largely male, although Torteman notes a gradual change across professional settings and industry events. “I’ve had the pleasure of spending the last 14 years working globally in this field, designing these various innovation frameworks for different institutions,” she said. “I don’t think I ever encountered a situation where my perspective was less regarded due to the fact that I’m a woman,” she said. However, she added that earlier stages of her career felt more challenging for different reasons. “The more mature you become, the more confident you are; a lot of these things become minor,” Torteman said. For women working in male-dominated environments, Torteman identifies one key factor: confidence. She stresses that developing confidence is necessary to stand out and assert authority, particularly where representation remains uneven.
Risks Institutions Rarely Discuss
Looking ahead, Torteman points to the risks that sit outside technology and product design, yet shape every financial system built on top of them. “The world is moving in unexpected directions from a geopolitical perspective,” she said. She links institutional risk not only to political instability, but also to global economic shifts and environmental disruptions that can rapidly alter market conditions, liquidity, and regulatory priorities.
Financial services, she notes, tend to absorb these shocks first, regardless of how advanced the underlying infrastructure becomes. These types of risks remain difficult to hedge solely through technology. Even well-designed systems must operate within changing macro conditions beyond institutional control. “Only the future will tell us,” Torteman said.
Why Institutional Blockchain Adoption Signals Maturity
Torteman closes by pointing to wider regulation, improved corporate governance and collateral structures, and the growing use of fully backed stablecoins. “I think that all this really shows that the industry has matured,” she said.
She highlights clearer regulatory frameworks in the United States’ Genius Act and MiCa in Europe as providing defined conditions for participation. “This kind of standardization creates a strong foundation for further developments,” Torteman said. For institutions considering blockchain, maturity and structure now matter more than experimentation.
