Original author: Weilin, PANews
On June 10, the XRP Ledger Apex 2025 conference was held in Singapore. At the conference, a concept called "XRPFi" became the focus of heated discussion on social media. XRPFi, the combination of XRP and decentralized finance (DeFi), is being seen by more and more practitioners as a new path to activate XRP, a long-established crypto asset, and drive the growth of the XRPL and Ripple ecosystem.
XRP is one of the most representative assets in the crypto market. Its current market value is close to $134.4 billion, making it the highest-valued non-smart contract cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. With its fast and low-cost cross-border payment capabilities, XRP has stable applications in traditional financial scenarios. However, in the on-chain field, XRP has long lacked smart contract support and has been difficult to integrate into the mainstream DeFi ecosystem. This structural contradiction has gradually become a focus of attention.
With the SEC suspending its lawsuit against Ripple, the market value of Ripple's stablecoin RLUSD approaching $390 million, and the market's continued speculation on the XRP ETF, investors' expectations for the future of XRP are gradually heating up. Some institutions and retail investors have begun to pay attention to how XRP can use DeFi to gain returns and improve asset utilization efficiency, which has also promoted the birth and development of the concept of "XRPFi".
Empowering XRPFi with Flare to create a multi-chain interoperable DeFi ecosystem
In the current development of XRPFi, Flare Network is regarded as a key infrastructure provider. Although XRP Ledger (XRPL) performs well in terms of speed and stability, it has natural limitations in terms of composability and contract functions required by DeFi. Therefore, Flare chose to empower XRP technically and become the core engine that bridges the traditional XRPL and multi-chain DeFi ecosystem.
Flare is an EVM-compatible L1 blockchain designed for multi-chain interoperability. Its FAssets protocol can map non-smart contract assets such as XRP to FXRP, enabling contract call capabilities and seamless access to decentralized lending, trading, and derivatives protocols. With this mechanism, XRP holders can participate in mainstream on-chain revenue activities including staking and liquidity mining.
In addition, Flare also introduced USD₮ 0 stablecoin as a native asset issued based on LayerZero's OFT (Omnichain Fungible Token) standard, with cross-chain native interoperability. After pairing with XRP, USD₮ 0 can not only be used to build trading depth pools and lending collateral, but also connect to the USDT ecosystem with a market value of more than $155 billion, injecting a highly liquid "capital base" into the XRPFi ecosystem.
According to official data, the Flare ecosystem has grown significantly recently: as of June 10, TVL exceeded $157 million, mainly due to the launch of USD₮ 0, and the current supply of USD₮ 0 is about $92.1 million. If we look at the long term, from February 2024 to February 2025, Flare's TVL increased by more than 400% year-on-year. At the same time, Flare has also integrated XRPL-compatible wallet tools such as Bifrost and Oxenflow to further lower the entry threshold for users.
Flare describes its XRPFi system as a "flywheel model": USD₮ 0 provides a source of capital and FXRP realizes contract composability. The pairing of the two brings liquidity, which in turn drives more DeFi applications and real-world scenarios, thereby feeding back the long-term ecological value of XRP.
In the future, Flare also plans to bring non-smart contract assets such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin into Flare to expand its usage scenarios in the DeFi field.
Constructing XRPFi profit matrix, CeDeFi and on-chain strategies in parallel
While Flare is building on-chain compatibility, Doppler Finance has designed a whole set of income mechanisms around XRP, trying to fill the gaps in XRP's past interest-bearing and financial products. As of June 8, the platform has attracted more than $30 million in TVL, becoming one of the important participants in the XRPFi track.
Doppler Finance provides two main types of income products: CeDeFi income and on-chain DeFi strategies. The former mainly manages assets through institutional-level custody and quantitative operations, while the latter explores on-chain income scenarios including lending, stablecoin strategies and staking.
In the CeDeFi model, users deposit XRP into a dedicated address, and the assets are kept by custodians such as Fireblocks and Ceffu, and transferred to centralized trading platforms as planned to carry out quantitative strategies such as arbitrage and basis trading. The income is returned to the user's account after off-chain settlement.
In terms of on-chain revenue, Doppler is actively connecting with the XRPL sidechain ecosystem, including EVM-compatible networks and emerging protocols. Its strategies include:
XRP Lending: Earn interest or native rewards by depositing XRP into audited and compliant lending protocols. Borrowers use other assets as collateral, and the platform automatically manages the liquidation process to ensure security.
Stablecoin yield strategy: Use XRP as collateral to borrow stablecoins (such as USDC) and then deploy them to stablecoin yield protocols. Doppler uses a conservative LTV ratio and dynamically adjusts positions to achieve low-risk returns.
Liquidity staking and leverage strategy: Users can perform one-click leverage staking in specific LST pools, especially around sidechain tokens such as ROOT. This mechanism simplifies cumbersome operation processes through automated contracts and improves user experience.
To further reduce risks, Doppler Finance is building a risk-isolated lending market that allows different asset pools to operate independently, thereby preventing highly volatile assets from dragging down the overall system stability. In addition to the core pool containing mainstream assets such as XRP, USDC, and ROOT, Doppler Finance also plans to launch multiple isolated markets, including an LST pool designed specifically for leveraged yield farming, and an isolated market containing game tokens in the Futureverse ecosystem.
Since XRPFi involves cross-chain assets, custody, and high-level strategy execution, its security mechanism has become an important part of the project design. Currently, Doppler Finance adopts a multi-layer risk control mechanism.
In terms of asset custody, the platform selects leading service providers in the industry (such as Fireblocks and Ceffu), and ensures asset security through cold wallet management, on-chain verification, bankruptcy isolation, etc. In terms of quantitative trading, the platform adopts a multi-strategy, multi-team cooperation model, and designs most operations as a "loan contract structure" to ensure that the principal can be recovered under non-extreme circumstances.
In addition, according to official introduction, all cooperating operators must pass rigorous due diligence, including assessments of historical performance, strategy stability, AUM size and financial risk, and screen qualified institutions to participate.
Filling the gap in the DeFi market, XRPFi is still in its early stages
As the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem involutions, the market is turning its attention to high-market-value assets that have not yet been fully activated. The emergence of XRPFi is filling the gap of XRP's long-standing "high market value, low chain usage". XRPFi is implemented through technologies such as the FAssets protocol of the Flare network, allowing XRP, which originally lacked smart contract capabilities, to enter the DeFi ecosystem. Doppler Finance is building a complete set of sustainable income mechanisms including CeDeFi income and liquidity staking. It not only has a real path, but also invests resources to improve security and user experience.
Logically, the development of XRPFi responds to the urgent need to activate the development of XRP and Ripple ecosystem. However, it should be pointed out that the current XRPFi ecosystem is still in its early stages. Although the product routes of Flare and Doppler are relatively clear, the overall user scale, liquidity depth, and protocol maturity remain to be verified. What is the prospect of integrating old assets into new narratives? PANews will continue to pay attention.
