How does the XRP Ledger compare with Canton, Hedera and other institution-focused chains?

The full answer

What points does this comparison use?

The page compares institution-focused ledgers on four points: who runs the network, privacy and permissioning, the native asset and whether institutions must hold it, and published live volumes with dates. Most of these points can be described for the XRP Ledger from public reporting. Canton and Hedera cannot. As of October 1, 2026, no checked source covers either network, so their entries are listed under what is not yet known rather than filled in.

Who runs the XRP Ledger, and who approves changes?

The XRP Ledger changes through amendments. Crypto Daily reported on July 23, 2026 that an amendment needs a supermajority of validators to support it continuously for a set voting window [4]. The debate over that list is covered on the page about whether the default validator list makes the XRP Ledger centralized.

XRPL.org adds that list publishers “do wield significant power in selecting which validators are widely trusted.”[12]

What privacy and permissioning does the XRP Ledger offer?

Messari’s Q1 2026 report, as reported by crypto.news, listed Permissioned Domains, Permissioned DEX and Token Escrow as having gone live on the XRP Ledger [2]. Analytics Insight reported on September 25, 2026 that PermissionDelegationV1_1 would let account owners delegate specific actions without granting full control of an account, with up to 10 permissions per delegate that the main account can revoke [3]. That amendment had not activated as of September 25. No checked public source describes transaction privacy on the XRP Ledger. The full list of controls is on the page about the compliance features the XRP Ledger offers institutions.

For the parts a party is not entitled to see, it gets “neither any transaction payload nor metadata like involved participants or parties.”[13] Canton says each application also sets its own access, “as permissioned, or permissionless as the app provider wants.”[9]

Do institutions have to hold XRP to use the ledger?

XRP is the ledger’s native asset, and market trading sets its price (Analytics Insight, September 25, 2026) [3]. Messari noted in its Q1 2026 report, as reported by crypto.news, that XRP stays tied to network use through transaction fees, account reserves, liquidity, asset ownership and bridging across currencies [2].

Institutional money on the ledger has moved mostly in a stablecoin. crypto.news reported on July 8, 2026 that the tokenized-Treasury settlement Ripple executed with JPMorgan, Mastercard and Ondo cleared on the XRP Ledger with RLUSD carrying the money, and that inside Ripple’s own product stack the asset doing the settlement work is mainly RLUSD, not XRP [1]. The same report found that fee burn, collateral and settlement together give XRP “a sliver” of Ripple Prime’s activity today [1]. The question of whether that shift lasts is taken up on the page asking whether RLUSD and other stablecoins will replace XRP.

What live volumes does the XRP Ledger publish?

DefiLlama’s XRPL stablecoin page showed $1.213 billion in stablecoins on September 29, 2026, with RLUSD at 92.46% of that total [5]. A September 2026 capture of DefiLlama’s XRPL chain page showed $45.03 million in DeFi total value locked, $20.89 million in RWA active AUM and $642 in chain fees over 24 hours [6]. Messari reported that average daily XRP Ledger transactions rose 35.3% quarter-over-quarter, from 1.83 million to 2.48 million (crypto.news) [2]. No matching figures for Canton or Hedera are available from checked sources, so these numbers have nothing to be set against here.

Hedera is “Governed by the Hedera Governing Council — a body of up to 39 global enterprises,” among them Google and IBM.[11] Hedera says anyone can submit transactions, but that page does not say who can run a consensus node.

Which institution-focused ledgers have won named roles?

crypto.news reported on July 8, 2026 that the DTCC announced in late May it would integrate the Stellar network into its tokenized securities platform as the first public blockchain in its strategy, and that the DTCC had not named the XRP Ledger [1]. The Stellar side is covered on the page asking whether Stellar is a real competitor to XRP.

Bank-run ledgers are a second group of rivals. crypto.news described JPMorgan’s Kinexys on July 8, 2026 as the largest bank-run tokenization platform in existence, and noted that several working-group members run their own competing tokenization ledgers [1]. 24/7 Wall St. reported on April 1, 2026 that Swift is building its own blockchain-based shared ledger for real-time, 24/7 settlement that would not rely on Ripple or any other external blockchain [7]. That ledger was described as under construction, not live. More detail is on the pages about JPMorgan’s Kinexys and Swift’s blockchain ledger.

Canton’s shared layer, the Global Synchronizer, “is operated by independently acting organizations, called Super Validators,” which “coordinate activities via an on-chain governance application.”[8] Canton says “Anyone can request a validator node (currently sponsorship is needed).”[9] A December 2025 Canton Network press release said DTCC would be “joining the Canton Foundation as co-chair alongside Euroclear.”[10]

What is the strongest case against the XRP Ledger in this comparison?

crypto.news argued on July 8, 2026 that the most likely output of the DTCC’s 50-firm committee is a standard that lets each major dealer plug in its own preferred infrastructure, leaving the XRP Ledger as one candidate among several [1]. It also described Ripple’s institutional activity as self-referential: Ripple Prime accepting XRP as collateral, Ripple’s stablecoin settling Ripple’s pilots, and Ripple’s ledger hosting Ripple’s products [1]. The same report gave the other side: supporters answer that RLUSD adoption seeds the ledger with institutional liquidity that XRP-based collateral and bridging could later use, which crypto.news called a claim whose first half is observable and whose second half is not yet [1].

What about Canton and Hedera?

As of October 1, 2026, no checked source says who runs Canton or Hedera, how either handles privacy and permissioning, what role their native assets play, or what live volumes they report. These gaps are logged for research. Until checked sources exist, this page does not describe either network, and the comparison with them stays open.