The price of XRP, the native cryptocurrency of the 75 dollars.
This increase positions XRP as the fourth cryptocurrency in biggest price increase in the last 90 days, behind Stellar (XLM), Hedera (HBAR) and Dogecoin (DOGE), according to data from Blockchain Center.
Added to this, XRP is already the third largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, with almost 140 billion dollars, behind bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH).
In this way, while XRP market data shoots up and Ripple, the company that created XRP, waits for the prompt approval of its stablecoin RLUSD, this article will review what the activity reflects on-chain from XRP Ledger.
More active addresses and more transactions on the XRPL network
Along with the increase in the price of XRP, the number of active addresses in the XRP Ledger network grew noticeably from the beginning of November 2024.
This metric was, as of November 30, at almost 60,000 active addresses, a figure not recorded since the end of April 2022, according to the analysis site CryptoQuant.
More active addresses could translate into more investors and users participating in the XRPL ecosystem.
In this sense, the Santiment platform highlighted today, December 2, 2024, that in the last 3 weeks the wallets containing between 1 million and 10 million XRP accumulated 679 million XRP (valued at around $1.6 billion).
That the network acquires a greater number of active accounts and sees the volume of XRP holdings increase implies a key boost in market confidence to attract more participants.
In addition, the number of daily transactions increased drastically from the last days of October to the present.
For example, on October 26, XRPL only processed just over 54,000 transactions, while on December 2, 2024, that statistic surpassed 3,200,000 transactionsaccording to XRPScan.
In 2024 the total value locked in XRPL increased
During 2024, the total value locked (TVL) on the XRPL network has progressively increased.
The most significant increase occurred from April to the end of September approximately, then stabilizing around 14 million XRP, according to XRPScan, which is equivalent to more than 37 million dollars at the time of this article.
Through the previous image it can be established that through its total value locked, XRPL has shown signs of gradual adoption in 2024, although delayed in recent weeks.
In relation to this data, and according to DeFiLlama, almost all of that percentage of the TVL of the XRPL network is located in the exchange decentralized (DEX) from red, XRPL DEX.
The TVL in the context of the XRP Ledger refers to the total value locked or deposited in smart contracts or decentralized applications (dApps) that operate on this network.
Represents the value in dollars or other equivalent currency that users have deposited in the protocols DeFiincluding pools liquidity, loans within the XRP Ledger ecosystem.
DeFi activity on XRPL grows
another metric on-chain that is showing good symptoms in recent weeks is the activity of the Automated Market Makers (AMM Counts). This is an important statistic to evaluate activity DeFi on a network.
Los AMM Counts (in Spanish Automated Market Creator) are protocols that allow asset exchanges in a decentralized way through pools of liquidity, without the need for a traditional order book. In the context of the XRP Ledger, they measure the amount of Automated Market Makers active on the network.
From the end of October to the present, this measurement has grown and exceeded 9,000 Automated Market Makers, according to XRPScan.
The mechanisms AMM Counts They are fundamental in the ecosystem of decentralized finance, since they facilitate the trading and offer users the ability to generate passive income by providing liquidity in the pools.
On the XRP Ledger, the AMMs functionality was enabled in March 2024 with the implementation of the XLS-30 amendment, which marked a relevant step towards the expansion of the ecosystem. DeFi of this network.
This expansion of AMMs in XRPL reflects the growing interest in using the network for decentralized activities such as asset exchange and liquidity provision by the users and developers of the XRPL ecosystem.
Some features of XRPL
The XRP Ledger network is an open source project governed by its decentralized community. That is, although Ripple created it, It does not exercise governance over it. The initial focus is efficiency for cross-border payments, remittances and transfers.
XRPL uses a consensus mechanism called Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm (RPCA). Unlike mechanisms such as Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Stake (PoS), the RPCA does not depend on mining or stakingbut of a globally distributed validator node system. Currently, the network has 619 nodes.
The RPCA operates through consensus rounds between validator nodes spread around the world. Of the total nodes, 111 are active validators responsible for verifying transactions and ensuring the integrity of the ledger (accounting book).
These validators work independently and decentralized, operated by entities such as companies, universities, organizations and individuals.
The consensus process begins when the nodes collect transactions submitted by users. These transactions go through an initial verification to ensure that they comply with the rules of the protocol, such as authenticity of signatures and adequacy of funds.
Validator nodes then share their valid transaction proposals with others in the network. For a transaction to be included in the ledger must receive the support of at least 80% of validators in a single list called Unique Node List (UNL), which groups the nodes considered trustworthy.
This process is repeated every 3 or 5 seconds, allowing a new block to be processed in that period with an average of 100 to more than 200 transactions each.
The fee that users pay for each transaction is 0.00001 XRP, which is equivalent to 0.000027 dollarsa low figure currently, although it will rise percentage-wise the same as the market value of XRP.
On the other hand, validator nodes not only verify transactions, but also play a key role in the decentralization of the network, which is essential for its security and reliability.
XRPL supports EVM compatible sidechains
XRPL stands out for its ability to integrate sidechains compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). These sidechains are independent networks that operate autonomously, with their own consensus rules, features and applications.
However, they are connected to the main network (mainchain) through an interoperability mechanism known as a bridge (bridge), which allows the fluid exchange of assets and data between both networks.
In the case of XRPL, these sidechains They give developers the ability to run smart contracts designed for Ethereum within a parallel environment. This opens the doors for integrate dApps and protocols DeFi to the XRPL ecosystem.
Thus, while Ripple prepares for the possible arrival of its stablecointhe XRP price and the XRPL metrics express a rise in their activity on-chain.
Although these data reflect an ecosystem that has increased its adoption in recent weeks, it will be key to evaluate how the development of these tools continues, such as the evolution of the stablecoin RLUSD, and whether users ultimately adopt these innovations within the ecosystem.