Top XRP Ledger Developments Investors Should Be Aware Of in 2025

The XRP Ledger isn't just sitting on its hands. While other networks hype vaporware, XRPL's builders are shipping real upgrades that cut costs, bypass bottlenecks, and attract serious capital. Forget the noise—here's what's actually moving the needle.

Automated Market Makers Go Live

The native AMM integration finally went live, and it's a game-changer. It brings deep, on-ledger liquidity to XRP and issued tokens without relying on centralized exchanges. This isn't a sidechain or a layer-2—it's baked directly into the protocol, slashing slippage and creating new arbitrage and yield opportunities that keep capital locked in the ecosystem.

The EVM Sidechain Surge

Developers bored with Ethereum's gas fees are flocking to XRPL's EVM-compatible sidechains. These chains offer a familiar environment but settle finality back on the robust XRP Ledger mainnet. It's a classic 'best of both worlds' play: attracting the massive Ethereum developer base while leveraging XRPL's speed and low cost. Watch for a surge in DeFi and NFT projects migrating over.

Central Bank Digital Currency Pilots Scale

Talk turned to action. Several national banks have moved from research to pilot phase, using the XRPL to issue and manage digital currencies. The ledger's built-in compliance features and ability to handle high-throughput, low-value transactions make it a pragmatic choice for governments—a boring but monumental use case that brings institutional legitimacy and sticky, regulated capital flows.

Interoperability Bridges Multiply

The 'walled garden' era is over. New trustless bridges are connecting XRPL to chains like Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche. This lets assets flow freely, turning XRP into a cross-chain liquidity hub. It's a strategic move to capture value from the broader crypto economy, not just its own native ecosystem—because even in decentralized finance, traffic drives revenue.

Regulatory Clarity Becomes a Moat

While other projects navigate legal gray areas, the XRP Ledger operates with a clarity that's becoming a competitive advantage. The resolution of its landmark case established a framework that institutions understand. In finance, certainty is an asset, and it's one that's drawing risk-averse enterprises that would rather build than litigate. Sometimes, winning in court is more valuable than winning on Twitter.

The ledger is building through the bear and bull cycles, focusing on utility over speculation. For investors, that means watching adoption metrics, not just price charts—though the cynics will note that in this industry, the former rarely moves without the promise of the latter.

Upcoming XRP Ledger Developments

Ripple rolled out the XRPL version 3.0.0 earlier this month, introducing five new amendments currently under review by validators. These proposed changes directly address issues related to price-oracle sorting, token-escrow accounting errors, missing ledger-entry files, Automated Market Maker (AMM) rounding issues, and more. 

Investors are paying close attention to these amendments, as they directly affect asset pricing, accounting, and tracking on the XRP Ledger. These areas can also influence risk assessment and confidence among market participants.

The five active amendments in Rippled 3.0.0, currently open for voting by January 2026, include:

• fixAMMClawbackRounding
• fixIncludeKeyletFields
• fixMPTDeliveredAmount
• fixPriceOracleOrder
• fixTokenEscrowV1

Firstly, the fixAMMClawbackRounding amendment resolves an accounting issue that can occur during AMM clawback transactions involving the final Liquidity Provider (LP) token holder. Previously, rounding errors could create mismatches between AMM balances and trust lines. The newly proposed update ensures these balances remain aligned, allowing invariant checks to function correctly. 

The second amendment, fixIncludeKeyletFields, adds missing identifying fields to several ledger entries. This includes escrow and payment channel sequence numbers, owner fields for signer lists, and document IDs for Oracle entries. The update makes it easier to reference and manage objects within the XRP Ledger. 

The fixMPTDeliveredAmount amendment restores missing DeliveredAmount metadata for direct Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPT) payment transactions. While payments already deliver the correct amounts, the added metadata from the proposed update makes it easier for investors and developers to see and verify what was actually delivered.

To ensure more reliable price data, the fixPriceOracleOrder amendment addresses inconsistencies in how asset pairs are ordered in price oracle entries. By enforcing a consistent order, the change allows applications and users to look up asset prices seamlessly. 

The final amendment, fixTokenEscrowV1, aims to improve accounting accuracy. It corrects an error affecting MPT escrows that include transfer fees. The update ensures that issuer-locked balances and the total supply are reduced by the correct net amounts when escrowed tokens are unlocked, improving the transparency of XRPL. 

XRPL Plans New Institutional Lending Protocol By 2026

Edward Hennis, a software engineer at Ripple, has announced an upcoming XRPL Lending Protocol that is set to transform on-ledger lending. According to Hennis, the protocol will offer fixed-term, fixed-rate, and underwritten credit designed for institutions. 

In his post on X, the Ripple engineer revealed that each loan on the ledger will operate within a Single Asset Vault that isolates risks and allows either private or public contributions. He stated that the protocol is expected to be available for voting by January 2026. Hennis also revealed that Market Makers, PSPs, and fintech lenders will be able to access XRP and RLUSD for a range of institutional use cases through the upcoming lending protocol.