Ripple, the corporate behind main cryptocurrency XRP, is going through neighborhood backlash after on-line entrepreneur Andrei Jikh raised questions over the corporate’s tasks and transparency.
Jikh took to X on Wednesday to voice his a number of considerations about Ripple, together with the dearth of verifiable on-chain knowledge to help the corporate’s declare of securing over 300 financial institution partnerships in its 13 years of operation.
Ripple’s chief know-how officer David Schwartz promptly joined the X thread, addressing all six questions raised by Jikh to defend the corporate’s strategy to transparency, on-chain knowledge and institutional adoption.
“I feel there are a variety of the explanation why establishments have traditionally most well-liked to make use of digital belongings off-chain slightly than on-chain,” Schwartz wrote, highlighting that even Ripple doesn’t use decentralized transactions on its XRP ledger (XRPL).
Ripple CTO admits on-chain adoption is sluggish
Though highlighting institutional preferences to remain off-chain, Schwartz steered that this development is “near altering” as a result of “establishments are beginning to see the advantages of transferring on chain.”
“However I agree it has been very sluggish,” he mentioned, reasoning Ripple’s option to not depend on the XRPL DEX for funds due considerations associated to terrorism financing.
“We will’t make sure a terrorist received’t present the liquidity for fee,” Schwartz mentioned.
He additionally talked about that options like “permissioned domains” might be a device to deal with this problem, however didn’t elaborate on how this might be an answer.
What’s the XRPL, and the way huge is it?
Launched in 2012, the XRPL is a decentralized, open-source blockchain that serves as the inspiration for the underlying cryptocurrency XRP (XRP).
Positioned by Ripple as “decentralized public blockchain constructed for enterprise,” XRPL has been on the middle of a rising variety of enterprise partnerships. These embody tokenization initiatives with the Dubai authorities and US funding agency Guggenheim, each introduced in June 2025.
Regardless of rising institutional curiosity, there’s nonetheless an absence of clear, on-chain monitoring instruments to point out how these partnerships are translating into precise transaction quantity on the XRPL community.
Platforms like DefiLlama report solely $81.8 million in complete worth locked (TVL) on XRP Ledger decentralized finance (DeFi) purposes, however in line with Schwartz, most institutional exercise occurs off-chain and thus stays untracked.
Ripple reported a 30%–40% drop on XRPL in Q1
After a interval of great development all through 2024, on-chain exercise on the XRPL declined within the first quarter of 2025, Ripple formally reported in Could 2025.
“There was a 30–40% decline in each new pockets creation and general transaction quantity on XRPL — consistent with exercise contractions seen throughout main blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum,” Ripple mentioned, with out specifying the precise figures.
The report additionally talked about that XRPL’s “DeFi exercise proved to be extra resilient than different segments,” as decentralized trade quantity solely decreased by 16% quarter-over-quarter.
Ripple winds down XRP Markets Report in present kind
In the identical quarterly report, Ripple talked about that the corporate determined to sundown the report in its present kind beginning in Q2 2025.
“Whereas the report is evolving, Ripple will proceed to be clear and share related updates on Ripple and XRP-related bulletins by way of its official channels, together with Ripple and RippleXDev […],” the corporate mentioned, including:
“As extra establishments interact with XRP, extra views and insights are anticipated to observe, pushing the market dialog ahead.”
Cointelegraph contacted Ripple for remark relating to monitoring the XRPL volumes however didn’t obtain a response by publication.
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