Ripple Unveils XRP Lending Protocol and Privacy Features

Ripple declared an institutional DeFi roadmap, which will involve on-chain lending markets, confidential movements, and permissioned trade on the XRP Ledger by 2026.

Ripple published its institutional DeFi roadmap on Thursday. The XRP Ledger is positioned by the company as the core of regulated finance, and XRP is the settlement and bridge currency of payment, collateral, and credit markets.

The roadmap outlines what is already operational on mainnet, including multi-purpose token standards, permissioned domains, and batch transactions. Future versions will expand the XRP Ledger into credit markets and privacy-preserving processes.

Banks Get Lending Markets and Private Transactions

XRPL v3.1.0 will launch on-ledger credit markets later in the year. Single-Asset Vaults and the XLS-66 Lending Protocol are used by the lending stack to provide underwritten loans with auto repayments and a fixed-term duration.

Evernorth is going to utilize the XRP Lending Protocol. According to Sagar Shah, the Chief Business Officer of Evernorth, the protocol is a paradigm shift in institutional liquidity. 

Through this native lending ecosystem, Evernorth will open up an opportunity to deliver over a multi-billion-dollar annual yield to the XRP community, Shah explained.

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Zero-Knowledge Proofs Enable Confidential Trading

Multi-purpose token Confidential Transfers will be released in Q1 2026. Financial transactions through the feature reveal the amount of the transaction and the balance using zero-knowledge proofs, enabling the institutions to handle tokenized assets without compromising on regulatory requirements.

Permissioned DEX will be launched in Q2 2026, connecting XRPL with the decentralized exchange into regulated environments. The technology will provide secondary markets of offline assets and foreign exchange, all with KYC and AML checks and balances.

XRP Powers Network Operations and Settlement

XRP is an auto-bridge currency during foreign exchange transactions. Each transaction burns a small quantity of XRP, which maintains the network reserves and covers transaction costs throughout the ledger. 

Existing stablecoins, like RLUSD, are already settled on XRPL, and with XRP, it becomes possible to convert between stablecoins and all other tokens instantly, linking network usage to the asset itself directly via protocol-level mechanisms.

The release conditions of Smart Escrows will be programmable and will be launched during Q2. Cross-token transactions will also be facilitated by the integration of MPT DEX. In February, an Institutional DeFi Portal will be released, which will provide tools to research tokenization and lending.