Although XRP faced a challenging first quarter of 2026 in terms of market performance, the underlying XRP Ledger (XRPL) experienced significant growth across several key metrics, according to the latest State of XRP report from Messari.
The report highlights a widening gap between XRP’s price performance and the network’s underlying fundamentals, with transaction volume, stablecoin adoption, and real world asset tokenization all showing substantial gains during the quarter.
XRP Struggles as Market Activity Slows
For most of the first quarter, XRP maintained its position as the fourth largest non stablecoin cryptocurrency by market capitalization, behind only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB.
Despite its strong ranking, XRP was not spared from the broader market weakness. Its market capitalization fell by 26% compared to the previous quarter, dropping to approximately $82 billion. The token’s price also declined by 27%, reaching around $1.34.
Trading activity softened during the same period. According to Messari, average daily spot trading volume decreased by 32%, while perpetual futures trading volume fell by nearly 29%.
Even so, institutional interest continued to expand. By the end of the quarter, exchange traded funds held approximately 775.4 million XRP, representing about 1.26% of the token’s circulating supply.
XRP Ledger Fundamentals Continue to Strengthen
While XRP’s market performance weakened, activity on the XRP Ledger moved in the opposite direction.
Messari reported that average daily transactions rose by 35% quarter over quarter, increasing from 1.83 million to 2.48 million transactions per day. The network also experienced accelerating adoption across both stablecoins and tokenized real world assets.
One of the most notable developments involved RLUSD, which expanded its market capitalization on the XRP Ledger to $340.3 million by the end of the quarter. This represented a 45% increase from the previous quarter.
At the same time, the value of tokenized real world assets on XRPL surged by 124% quarter over quarter, reaching a record high of $2.25 billion.
Institutional Focus Drives New Infrastructure
The report also pointed to continued progress in building infrastructure aimed at institutional decentralized finance applications.
During the quarter, several new features became operational, including permissioned domains, a permissioned decentralized exchange, and token escrow functionality. Additional proposals, such as native lending protocols and asset vaults, remained under review and voting.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the XRP Ledger’s role in institutional finance continues to expand. While XRP’s price faced headwinds during the quarter, growth in network activity, stablecoin usage, and tokenized assets indicates that the ecosystem’s underlying fundamentals remained strong.#crypto#cryptonews https://coinsignals.net https://t.me/coinsignalpublic
