According to Messari's latest State of XRP Q1 2026 report, XRP Ledger activity experienced a significant 35.3% quarter-over-quarter increase in daily transactions, rising from 1.83 million to 2.48 million. This surge in network activity occurred despite XRP's 27.1% price decline to $1.34 and 26.3% market cap drop to $82.21 billion during the same period. The report indicates that XRPL usage expanded even as token price and trading activity cooled, with average daily spot volume falling 32% and perpetual futures volume declining 28.6% quarter-over-quarter. As reported by Messari, XRP ended Q1 as the fourth-largest non-stablecoin crypto asset by market value, trailing behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB.
According to Messari's report, Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin emerged as the largest stablecoin on the XRP Ledger with a $340.3 million market cap, representing a 44.9% quarter-over-quarter increase. This growth pushed RLUSD ahead of other stablecoins on the network, with the report noting that RLUSD had more holders on XRPL than Ethereum by quarter-end, though Ethereum still handled larger transfer volume. The XRPL stablecoin market cap has already surged nearly 200% in Q2, pushing total stablecoin market cap to a new all-time high of $750 million. The increasing volume of RLUSD transactions on Visa's platform demonstrates the growing institutional adoption of XRPL-based stablecoins in global payment systems.
The XRPL real-world asset (RWA) market experienced remarkable growth, with market cap climbing 124.1% quarter-over-quarter to $2.25 billion, reaching a new quarterly high. As reported by Messari, this growth pushed XRPL into the top group of public blockchains for tokenized assets, ranking seventh by RWA market cap at the end of Q1 and fourth by the time of publication. The network continues to support payments, token issuance, decentralized liquidity, real-world assets, and stablecoins, with XRP remaining tied to network use through transaction fees, account reserves, liquidity, asset ownership, and bridging across currencies. The XRP/ETH ratio ended the quarter up 4.25%, marking XRP's first outperformance versus Ethereum since Q1 2025.
According to Messari's report, new institutional finance tools moved forward during Q1, with Permissioned Domains, Permissioned DEX and Token Escrow going live on XRPL. Native lending and asset vault features remained in voting, which could support lending, borrowing and more structured use of XRP and other assets on the network. The report noted that U.S. spot XRP ETFs ended Q1 holding 775.4 million XRP, representing 1.26% of circulating supply and up 1.9% from the previous quarter. As previously reported by crypto.news, Morgan Stanley recently disclosed small positions in two XRP-focused ETFs, while XRP funds attracted $85.8 million in inflows over three weeks, showing continued demand through regulated products.
