Ripple’s XRP Ledger is undergoing a strategic shift as the community calls for native staking. This follows the recent launch of its Canary Capital ETF, which gained about $57 million in volume on the first day of trading.
These two developments suggest XRP is moving beyond its traditional payments niche and into a broader investment and DeFi landscape.
Ripple explores native staking to boost XRPL’s potential
XRP is known for its speed and efficiency in cross-border transactions. However, the XRP Ledger (XRPL) is missing a feature common in many blockchains, which allows holders to earn rewards by locking their tokens to support network operations.
Ayo Akinyele, Head of Engineering at RippleX, in a thread on X, started the conversation about staking on XRPL, asking: “what if we supported native staking on the XRPL one day? What would this look like?”
Prominent voices in the XRP community and the XRPL have openly weighed in on whether staking would be a native feature of the XRPL.
Implementing staking poses technical challenges, especially given XRPL’s unique consensus mechanism. A community member WrathofKahneman on X also noted that Ripple owns most of XRP and “staking would validate their influence over the ledger obviously and structurally”.
Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz proposed a preliminary solution where policing of staked funds is left to validators. However, this raises a problem where validators only accept stakes from their “friends”.
To solve this, Schwartz proposed the creation of a worthless governance token with limited supply. Holders of that token would collectively manage the validator list, replacing the Unique Node List (UNL) with a self-governing system. If some token holders act against the community’s interest, others can respond by creating a fork of the token and directing their network to support it instead.
ETF momentum and DeFi access broaden XRP’s appeal
XRP-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have started to attract significant attention. Canary Capital’s spot XRP ETF was the first to gain approval, drawing more than $57 million in inflows shortly after launch. This move provides traditional investors with an accessible way to gain exposure to XRP without directly handling cryptocurrencies. The combination of staking and ETF adoption will help increase XRP’s appeal by offering both yield and easier market access.
Community-driven DeFi projects are already experimenting with yield programs for XRP, such as Doppler Finance and Flare network, which has bridged XRP into DeFi through liquid staking tokens, allowing holders to earn yield on their locked XRP. This lets users participate more actively in the Ripple ecosystem, gaining financial benefits previously unavailable.
“Getting those incentives right and corresponding penalties are critical to maintaining the network’s fairness and resilience,” Akinyele added, as XRP gradually becomes part of a larger financial ecosystem that includes DeFi opportunities and accessible investment vehicles like ETFs.
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