Ripple Announces RLUSD Growth Strategy: L2 Expansion On Ethereum Planned For 2026
Ripple, the issuer of the fast-growing RLUSD stablecoin, has lately introduced an formidable multichain technique geared toward enhancing its presence within the crypto area.
This initiative will see RLUSD built-in into Layer-2 (L2) options on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, facilitated by a partnership with Wormhole, one of many largest protocols for cross-chain interoperability.
Ripple Targets Broader Blockchain Integration
In a press release issued on Monday, Ripple and Wormhole detailed their plans to provoke testing on a number of notable L2 networks, together with Optimism (OP), Base, Ink, and Unichain.
The collaboration will leverage Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) commonplace, which is designed to make sure environment friendly motion of liquidity throughout varied blockchain ecosystems whereas permitting Ripple to take care of native management over RLUSD.
Originally launched on each the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and Ethereum, RLUSD goals to boost cross-chain functionalities and decentralized finance (DeFi) alternatives.
Jack McDonald, Senior Vice President of Stablecoin at Ripple, emphasised the importance of stablecoins within the DeFi panorama, stating:
Stablecoins are the gateway to DeFi and institutional adoption. RLUSD is designed from the bottom as much as be the trusted, liquid medium vital for customers to seamlessly enter, work together with, and exit the whole digital asset financial system.
The government additionally highlighted that by launching RLUSD as the primary US Trust Regulated stablecoin on these L2 networks, Ripple can be setting a regular the place compliance meets on-chain effectivity. Looking towards, Ripple plans to launch RLUSD on further chains, pending last regulatory approval.
RLUSD Becomes Third-Largest US-Regulated Stablecoin
Notably, RLUSD has achieved a market capitalization of $1.3 billion in lower than a yr, making it the third-largest stablecoin amongst US-regulated choices, in accordance with CoinGecko data.
Positioned for compliance with the GENIUS Act, RLUSD’s circulating provide surged by 28% in November alone, crossing the billion-dollar threshold. It presently ranks behind solely Circle’s USDC and PayPal’s PYUSD within the US-regulated greenback tokens.
In a major growth in November of this yr, Ripple additionally initiated a brand new pilot program with conventional finance giants Mastercard, WebBank, and crypto trade Gemini geared toward facilitating bank card transaction settlements utilizing RLUSD on the XRP Ledger.
This partnership permits WebBank to ship RLUSD over the XRPL for fast settlement of day by day fee obligations with Mastercard, eliminating the normal delays related to financial institution ACH transfers.
Ripple’s president, Monica Long, described this pilot as a “significant step” towards demonstrating how regulated digital belongings can expedite institutional fee processes.
XRP, which can be related to the corporate, is buying and selling at $1.90. This represents a 5% drop over the previous 24 hours, in step with the broader correction within the crypto market cap, which has seen Bitcoin (BTC) and different main altcoins resume the downtrend witnessed over the previous two months.
Featured picture from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com