What happened in the XRP ecosystem in each quarter of 2026?

The full answer

The fullest quarterly figures here come from Blockworks Advisory’s report on the second quarter of 2026, which Ripple commissioned.[1] Other figures, including partial third-quarter data, come from fund filings, company releases and data sites, each dated in the text. No public filing gives a third-quarter ETF holdings total; the only ETF flow figure for the quarter is the over $150 million of net inflows into U.S. spot XRP ETFs in August 2026, as reported by a secondary source. The third quarter ends on September 30, 2026, so its section runs through September 29. Reports covering the full quarter had not yet been published.

What happened in the first quarter (January to March)?

Most first-quarter news widened the ways institutions can reach XRP.

• February 4: Ripple said Ripple Prime clients could reach Hyperliquid’s onchain derivatives while cross-margining those positions against other assets.[3]
• February 9: Ripple added hardware key storage from Securosys, staking through Figment and Chainalysis screening to Ripple Custody.[4]
• February: the XRP Ledger’s Permissioned DEX went live, built on Permissioned Domains activated earlier that month, Crypto Briefing reported.[5]
• March 23: SEC Release 33-11412 took effect. It lists XRP among its examples of digital commodities.[6]
• March 31: the Bitwise XRP ETF held 194,904,778 XRP, up from 131,223,200 at December 31.[7] Franklin’s fund held 159,659,740 XRP, according to its later quarterly filing.[8]
• XRPL-native stablecoins totalled $1.213 billion as of September 29, 2026, according to DefiLlama.[1]

Blockworks counted $174.8 million of net inflows into XRP exchange-traded products for the quarter, with assets of $2.40 billion at quarter-end.[1]

What happened in the second quarter (April to June)?

Money arrived on the ledger, and hedging markets grew.

• April 6: open interest in CME XRP futures hit a record 14.8 thousand contracts, Blockworks reported.[1] Blockworks put the quarter’s CME XRP notional volume at $10.80 billion, with 36.6 thousand contracts a day on average.[1]
• April 30: Ripple announced a partnership with Korea’s Kbank to deploy digital asset wallet infrastructure through Ripple Custody.[9]
• May 6: Ondo Finance, JPMorgan’s Kinexys, Mastercard and Ripple completed a cross-border redemption of tokenized US Treasuries on the XRP Ledger, with RLUSD as payment.[1]
• May 11: Ripple said Ripple Prime took a $200 million debt facility from funds managed by Neuberger Specialty Finance.[10]
• June 9: Ripple said Bitso’s peso stablecoin MXNB would be issued on the XRP Ledger and used with RLUSD.[11]
• June 24: Ripple announced RLUSD’s launch in Japan through SBI VC Trade’s VCTRADE platform, following approval from the Japan Financial Services Agency.[12]

By June 30 XRPL-native stablecoin supply had risen 195.4% to $825.5 million. RLUSD on the ledger rose 257% to $676.9 million.[1] Tokenized assets reached $4.46 billion. About half of that was one energy token, JMWH, “held entirely by the issuer.” The distributed part, which Blockworks defines as assets “transferable outside their issuing platforms and between wallets,” fell 5.0% to $386.1 million.[1] Five US spot XRP ETFs held about 906.8 million XRP, based on a sum of their filings.[13] Net inflows into XRP exchange-traded products were $253.6 million for the quarter.[1]

The same report shows the other side. XRP “declined 19.9% to $1.04.” Payment volume on the ledger was 41.07 billion XRP, “down 26.6% QoQ and 4.3% YoY,” though the report’s summary calls the yearly change “nearly unchanged.” DEX spot volume fell 35.9%.[1]

What has happened so far in the third quarter (July to September 29)?

The third quarter brought balance-sheet moves and lending code, but lending is not yet switched on.

• July 10: Circle announced final OCC approval for its national trust bank.[14] Ripple’s trust bank was conditionally approved by the OCC on December 12, 2025, and no public final approval had appeared as of September 28, 2026.[25][24]
• July 29: Aviva Investors said it launched a tokenized share class of its USD Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger.[15]
• August 18: Ripple said Ripple Prime closed an upsized $275 million offering of senior unsecured notes, rated BBB by KBRA.[16]
• August: US spot XRP ETFs took in “over $150 million” of net inflows, their best month of 2026, according to 24/7 Wall St.[17]
• August 27: Evernorth said the SEC had declared its merger registration effective, with a shareholder vote set for September 30 and a planned Nasdaq listing under the ticker XRPN.[18]
• September 16: xrpld 3.4.0 shipped the LendingProtocolV1_1 amendment.[19] At 19:47 UTC on September 29, xrpldashboard showed all 35 validators heard, with 15 supporting the LendingProtocol amendment and 29 needed for a majority.[20]
• September 24: Flare said about 145.2 million FXRP, its 1:1 representation of XRP, had been minted, with 130 million of it in DeFi.[22]
• September 27: Bitwise’s fund page showed 413,140,980.47 XRP in its XRP ETF trust, with data as of September 27, 2026 (company-reported).[21]
• September 29: in captures that day, DefiLlama showed $1.213 billion of stablecoins on the XRP Ledger[2] and RWA.xyz showed $498.71 million of distributed tokenized assets and $4.10 billion of represented ones.[23]

A preview of what is scheduled next is on the page about what is in the XRP and Ripple pipeline for Q4 2026.

Which quarterly metrics are in native units and which in dollars, and which cannot be summed?

Whether ETF figures can be added to treasury, DeFi or derivatives figures is covered in detail on the page about whether XRP holdings can be double counted.

Is this a pattern or a string of announcements?

Read in order, the dated events move from access products to dollars on the ledger to credit. That grouping is my own, and several events do not fit it. Ledger payment volume was down 4.3% year on year in the second quarter while the pieces were added, and XRP’s price fell in the second quarter.[1] The link between these metrics and price is on the page asking why XRP’s price isn’t rising even with more adoption. Whether CME’s growth was specific to XRP is on the page comparing CME XRP growth with other coins.

The stablecoin figures come from two trackers: Blockworks for March 31 and June 30, DefiLlama for September 29.[1][2] Because each counts its own way, the page does not compute a growth rate across them. The case against projecting 2026’s rates forward is on the page asking whether 2026’s growth rates will continue, and the question of whether fresh money is actually arriving is on the page about whether institutional capital is flowing into XRP.