Ripple vs. XRP vs. XRP Ledger: What’s the Difference? Ibiam Wayas | usagoldmines.com

Every so often, many people tend to say Ripple when they mean to say XRP, i.e., the third-largest cryptocurrency. While they are bound under the ecosystem, Ripple vs XRP vs XRP Ledger are entirely different things meant to play different roles. 

“Let’s be clear, Ripple is different than XRP.” Brad Garlinghouse, the now-CEO of Ripple, precisely made this statement in 2022, establishing the difference.

In a nutshell, the best way to think about it is to see Ripple as a company, XRP as a coin, and XRP Ledger as a blockchain. But apparently, not many people know this, as they’ve continued to interchange one for another for more than a decade.

The root of this confusion boils down to the early days of the projects, when branding was intentionally broad. Let’s talk about it more.

Why the Confusion Exists

The initial branding and the historical mislabeling of Ripple, XRP, and XRP Ledger are two factors that chiefly contributed to this confusion that exists even now.

Ripple, XRP, and XRP Ledger Often Used Interchangeably

The XRP Ledger was first launched as the Ripple Consensus Ledger in 2012. Back then, the network, the protocols, and even the native cryptocurrency XRP, were all branded as “Ripple.” Many people carried on with this unified branding, referring to the ledger and XRP as Ripple.

It grew worse after the private company was created. The company was initially called NewCoin and later rebranded to Ripple. 

Although Ripple claims to be separate from the ledger, the perceived link between the company and the coin led to people using terms like “Ripple’s blockchain” and “Ripple’s coin” when referring to XRP. 

History of Mislabeling in Media and Exchanges

Crypto exchanges and media outlets contributed to the wrong-footing of investors who mislabel Ripple, XRP, and XRP Ledger. 

The media over-associated XRP with Ripple, with some routinely  writing headlines like “Ripple’s price crossed $3 today,” for instance, when it should have been written as “XRP’s price crossed $3 today.” In May 2021, Brad Garlinghouse corrected CNBC on this after they listed “Ripple” in top crypto rankings and referred to XRP price surges as “Ripple’s rally.”

“Thanks [Joe Kernen] and [Andrew Ross Sorkin] for having me on to chat about Ripple’s traction, the differences between Ripple and XRP, and the need for regulatory clarity. On the second point…fixed your graphic for you,” Garlinghouse wrote.

Kraken, Binance, and many other crypto exchanges were also guilty of mislabeling XRP and Ripple. In 2022, a former Fox Business journalist, Eleanor Terrett, called out Kraken for labeling XRPL as the “Ripple network” and also listing XRP under a “Ripple” header.

Having known what stirred the confusion, here’s how XRP, Ripple, and XRP Ledger differ from each other. 

What Is Ripple?

Ripple is a private blockchain company that oversees the development of use cases and the adoption of the XRP Ledger. Ripple holds the majority of the XRP supply in escrow, but the firm remains structurally separate from either XRP or XRP Ledger.

Ripple Labs Overview

Ripple Labs started as NewCoin in September 2012 by Chris Larsen, Jed McCaleb, David Schwartz, and Arthur Britto. 

Shortly after the inception, the company was rebranded to OpenCoin and later Ripple Labs, and then shortened to Ripple, all within 2012 and 2015.

The founders formed Ripple to provide a better alternative to the traditional banking systems, where cross-border payments could settle in 3-5 seconds and at a nearly zero-cost fee, using XRP and the XRPL network. So, Ripple is basically a major user on the network meant to showcase the use case of XRP Ledger. 

As an incentive for doing this, Ripple was given 80% (or 80 billion) of XRP’s total supply to fund its payment solutions, provide liquidity, and seed markets via partnerships, all for the purpose of promoting the XRPL network.

RippleNet and Payment Solutions

RippleNet is Ripple’s alternative to traditional payment networks like SWIFT. RippleNet is not a blockchain itself. Rather, it leverages the XRP Ledger and XRP coin to provide faster and cheaper transactions across borders.

As of October 2025, over 300 financial institutions are reported to have joined RippleNet, including SBI Holdings, Bank of Japan, American Express, Standard Chartered, Santander UK and Spain, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, among others.

The network processed a whopping $1.3 trillion in quarterly volume in Q2 2025 alone. 

Aside from RippleNet, the company also offers other products like On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), Ripple CBDC Platform, RLUSD stablecoin, and so on.

Ripple’s Institutional Partnerships

Ripple has scored a lot of partnerships with some of the world’s largest financial institutions, banks, custodians, and fintech providers to use its services. 

As mentioned earlier, SBI Holdings, Standard Chartered, and 300 other institutions currently use RippleNet to settle cross-border payments. 

In September 2025, Ripple partnered with Securitize to integrate its recently debuted dollar-stablecoin RLUSD into the latter’s tokenization platform, allowing investors of tokenized money-market funds from BlackRock and VanEck to redeem their holdings for RLUSD on demand.

The central banks of Georgia, Colombia, etc., had also selected Ripple as a technology partner to oversee their CBDC pilot in 2023.

Ripple’s Role in Driving XRP Adoption

Ripple has been instrumental in the institutional adoption of XRP and XRP Ledger. Most of its services are underpinned by the coin and network.

The ODL, for instance, uses XRP as a real-time bridge asset for international payments, which is one of the major XRP token use cases.

Under the ODL service, all the partners that would need to convert their local currency into XRP, send the XRP across the network, and then have it instantly converted into the destination fiat currency, e.g., USD to XRP to GBP. 

The company is also dabbling in other areas like tokenization, institutional DeFi, all of which bring more traction to the XRPL network. 

What Is XRP?

XRP refers to the actual cryptocurrency that powers the XRP Ledger. It is the base currency for the XRPL network, just like ETH is the currency for Ethereum.

XRP as a Digital Asset

XRP was specifically created for fast, low-cost global financial transactions. It has a maximum of 100 billion coins, which were all created (pre-mined) when the XRP Ledger was launched. So, how is supply being managed, you may ask.

Recall that about 80 billion XRP was allocated to Ripple to fund the growth of XRPL. Ripple locked the majority of those coins in a time-locked escrow to create supply predictability in the market.

Every month, 1 billion XRP is released from escrow, but most times, not all the coins hit the market. Any unused tokens are locked back into escrow for a later date.

Only about 59.8 billion XRP are currently in circulation, according to CoinMarketCap data. 

Use Cases

XRP directly addresses the biggest issues with international payment systems. Today, it is used by many institutions to process fast, low-cost cross-border payments, which used to be a major pain point with legacy systems like SWIFT. 

The 3rd-largest crypto has also made it easier for institutions to access liquidity in seconds through Ripple’s ODL. Previously, when banks wanted to process an international payment, they had to first pre-fund Nostro and Vostro accounts in various foreign currencies to shore up liquidity. 

The ODL removes this need by using XRP as a bridge currency, where the money is first converted to XRP, transferred in seconds, and then converted to the receiver’s local currency.

As with other cryptocurrencies, XRP is also used for remittance due to the inherent properties of the blockchain that allow for faster and cheaper payments, compared to traditional providers like Western Union. 

XRP’s Speed and Cost Advantages

XRP transactions are processed within 3-5 seconds and cost a minimum of 0.00001 XRP, which is equivalent to $0.0000297 at current prices. Meanwhile, transfers with traditional systems like SWIFT can take up to 3-5  business days. Even Bitcoin transactions take up to 10 or more to settle.

The speed and cost advantages of XRP are mainly due to XRP Ledger’s unique consensus mechanism, which only relies on a list of trusted validators to quickly confirm transactions – more on this later in the article. 

XRP vs Other Cryptocurrencies

XRP is similar to BTC, ETH, stablecoins, and other digital assets in that they are backed by blockchain. However, the purpose is what sets it apart from the rest. 

Just like BTC was created to enable peer-to-peer transactions without any central authority, the primary purpose of XRP is to facilitate fast and low-cost cross-border payments for financial institutions. 

XRP differs from stablecoins like USDT, USDC, etc., in pricing. While the price of XRP is mostly driven by supply and demand in the open market, stablecoins are pegged to an underlying asset or currency, which keeps their value stable.

Here is a quick overview of how XRP compares to BTC and ETH in terms of transaction purpose, speed, and consensus mechanism.

What Is the XRP Ledger?

XRP Ledger is more like the engine that powers the XRP ecosystem. Both RippleNet and XRP are based on the XRP Ledger. It was created by the same founders of Ripple, but operates independently of the company. 

XRP Ledger Basics

The XRPL network is a decentralized and public layer-1 blockchain, meaning no single entity has full control over the network, not even Ripple. Anyone can choose to become a validator on the network from anywhere in the world. 

XRPL is open-source, meaning anyone to inspect, modify, and build on it. You can build smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) on the network. 

XRP Ledger also now supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) through a sidechain, which was deployed in June 2025. That meant any Ethereum dApps can now run on the XRPL through the layer-2 blockchain. In just the first week, the sidechain saw over 1400 smart contracts deployed.

Consensus Mechanism

As mentioned earlier, XRP Ledger uses a unique consensus mechanism called XRP Ledger Consensus Protocol. It is the reason transactions on the network finalize within 3 to 5 seconds, and also why you cannot mine XRP like BTC, or stake XRP in the traditional sense like ETH or SOL. 

The protocol is based on the Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus mechanism, which ensures that XRPL continues to work normally even in cases where the validators fail or act maliciously.

There are roughly 150 validator nodes on the XRPL network run by Ripple and institutions like universities, exchanges, and independent operators. Every validator on the network owns a list of other validators it trusts not to act maliciously, which is called the Unique Node List (UNL). 

When a transaction is made, a validator collects and shares it with their UNL. It will only be validated after 80% or more of a validator’s UNL approves of it. Interestingly, this whole process happens in the space of 3 to 5 seconds. 

Smart Contracts and Tokenization Capabilities

The recently launched XRP EVM sidechain makes it possible for anyone to deploy Ethereum-compatible smart contracts and dApps on the XRP Ledger today. 

Aside from that, XRPL is able to natively support programmability of lightweight smart contracts at the protocol level through what it calls “Hooks.” 

At the moment, XRPL does not natively support Turing-complete smart contracts, so all the heavyweight dApps seen on Ethereum, such as Uniswap and Aave, cannot be built directly on XRPL, but are possible through the sidechain.

Tokenization, meanwhile, is very much possible with XRPL. It is supported natively on the ledger so well that you wouldn’t need to deploy any custom smart contracts. 

Environmental and Efficiency Benefits

Over the years, Bitcoin’s Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism has been a subject of criticism due to the energy-intensive process of mining new coins. XRP Ledger avoided this problem by choosing to use a federated consensus, which does not require mining.

It’s safe to say that XRPL is more eco-friendly and scalable compared to Bitcoin. The ledger handles up to 1,500 transactions per second at nearly zero fee. 

How Ripple, XRP, and XRP Ledger Work Together

By now, it should be clear to you the difference between Ripple and XRP and how each of them works together in the network. Ripple fronts the adoption of XRPL by leveraging XRP and the blockchain in its products. XRP serves as the base currency on the XRPL network, which powers all the transactions.  

Ripple Using XRP and XRPL in Its Payment Solutions

RippleNet is one example of how Ripple uses XRP and XRPL networks in payment solutions. RippleNet leverages the XRP Ledger for real-time messaging, clearing, and settlement of financial transactions across borders, much faster and cheaper than traditional alternatives. 

Also, Ripple uses XRP in its On-Demand Liquidity service as a bridge currency, removing the need for banks to pre-fund accounts in various local currencies just to facilitate international payments.

Independent Developers Building on XRPL Beyond Ripple

Ripple is not the only developer shipping products on XRPL. There have been other applications launched on the network by independent developers. Here are a few examples.

1. xrp.cafe

xrp.cafe is both an NFT marketplace and a launchpad for the XRPL ecosystem, where anyone can buy, sell, and mint NFTs on the XRP Ledger. The developers also created “First Ledger,” a Telegram-based trading bot for XRPL.

2. Xaman Wallet

Xaman is leading a self-custodial crypto wallet for the XRPL ecosystem. It was specifically designed to allow users to manage digital assets on the XRP Ledger.

3. Sologenic

Sologenic is an XRP Ledger-based platform that aims to bridge the traditional financial market to crypto. The platform allows users to trade tokenized stocks and ETFs using XRP.

4. Vertex Protocol

Vertex Protocol is a decentralized exchange for trading on-chain tokens. It was initially launched on Arbitrum but later deployed to XRP Ledger via the sidechain.

Legal and Regulatory Implications

The tie and mislabeling of XRP, Ripple, and XRP Ledger weren’t without some implications. 

Ripple’s profound contribution to the network, including the whopping 80 billion XRP it received from the founders, remains a point of contention for many crypto critics on the claim that XRP Ledger is “decentralized.” 

Some argued that any single entity, especially a for-profit company like Ripple, with such a massive allocation, has too much influence over the XRP market.

On the regulatory side, the interchange of XRP and Ripple led to false narratives that buyers were buying into Ripple companies, instead of the XRP coin. This formed part of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) argument against Ripple during its nearly five-year legal battle.

SEC alleged Ripple conducted an unregistered securities offering by selling XRP, claiming XRP was a security because its value was tied to the company’s efforts.

Common Misconceptions About Ripple and XRP

The shared history between XRP, Ripple, and the XRP Ledger has resulted in certain misconceptions. Let’s get the facts straight.

Ripple Does Not Own the XRP Ledger

Ripple and XRP Ledger may have been created by the same founders, but they operate independently from each other. Even if Ripple ceases to exist today, the network will continue to operate as always. 

The reason is that the network is managed by a network of independent validators. Ripple operates a validator node, too, but their rights and control are the same as any other participant.

XRP Is Not Just “Ripple’s Coin”

It’s wrong to refer to XRP as Ripple’s coin, and that’s because Ripple did not issue XRP. The firm does not own the cryptocurrency itself. 

XRP was issued natively to the XRP Ledger for paying transaction fees and as a “bridge currency” to facilitate fast, low-cost cross-border payments.

The XRP Ledger Is Maintained by Independent Validators

Many people assumed Ripple solely maintains the XRPL, with its validators acting as company nodes. But as we mentioned before, Ripple is only a participant in the network with no special privilege. 

The network is rather maintained by a decentralized network of over 150 validators operated by independent entities, including universities (e.g., MIT), crypto exchanges, and community members. 

Use Cases of XRP Ledger Beyond Ripple

Ripple and its services are not all that the XRP Ledger has to offer. The blockchain has many native functionalities that enable other use cases. 

Micropayments and Cross-Border Remittances

Ripple’s ability to provide faster and cheaper cross-border payments with its services is not a prerogative of the company alone. 

In fact, that ability is an inherent technical characteristic of the XRPL network. And so, it means that anyone anywhere can also decide to build a similar efficient platform for micropayment and cross-border transactions using XRPL.

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Pilots

The XRP Ledger can also be used to issue and manage central bank digital currencies. 

Ripple itself proved this by launching its own private network based on XRPL, where central banks have complete control and sovereignty to explore and pilot CBDC projects. 

NFTs and Tokenization on XRPL

If you can recall, we mentioned earlier that the XRP Ledger natively supports tokenization of assets. That’s a big use case. You can easily leverage the network to mint, trade, and burn various tokenized assets, including non-fungible tokens and real-world assets. 

The Future of Ripple, XRP, and the XRP Ledger

The resolution of the years-long legal battle between Ripple and the SEC is a big win for the future of the company, XRP, and the network at large. 

When the SEC sued Ripple in 2020, we saw how that impacted the Ripple and XRP’s price. But when both parties eventually filed to dismiss the case in August 2025, the outlook turned bullish, with XRP’s price reflecting that.

With that uncertainty now waived, we expect to see growth across key areas. 

Institutional Adoption Outlook

Following news that Ripple was ending its case with the SEC, the company has been able to onboard more institutional partners, including BNY Mellon. That perhaps gives a glimpse of more institutional adoption going forward.

Legal Clarity and Regulation in 2025

There is now some clarity that XRP doesn’t qualify as a security, which has paved the way for XRP spot ETFs and institutional investments, which are healthy for XRP’s price. We can expect to see more ETF launches and XRP digital asset treasury firms in the future.

XRPL Expansion and Developer Ecosystem

With all things considered, it is not difficult to predict that the XRPL ecosystem will expand from here, especially with the launch of the EVM sidechain, which bridges Ethereum to XRP Ledger. We can expect to see liquidity flow into the XRPL ecosystem. 

This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak

All rights reserved to : USAGOLDMIES . www.usagoldmines.com

You can Enjoy surfing our website categories and read more content in many fields you may like .

Why USAGoldMines ?

USAGoldMines is a comprehensive website offering the latest in financial, crypto, and technical news. With specialized sections for each category, it provides readers with up-to-date market insights, investment trends, and technological advancements, making it a valuable resource for investors and enthusiasts in the fast-paced financial world.