XRP
KLEAR3 ResearchPublished 2026-08-25Updated
XRP LedgerXRPXRP holds the fifth capitalisation on this list and runs on a ledger whose code has been public since 2011, older than every other entry here except Bitcoin. Two things are worth knowing before anything else: the repository address the data sites publish redirects elsewhere, and 37,241,122,839 of the supply is not in circulation.
What does XRP actually do?
XRP settles payments on a ledger that closes a new version every few seconds. It reaches agreement by asking a list of servers each participant trusts, rather than by spending electricity, which makes it fast and cheap and shifts the question to who is on those lists.
That design choice is the whole story. Where a ledger secured by electricity makes rewriting history expensive, XRP makes it a matter of overlap: enough honest servers must appear on enough lists. Neither approach is the correct one. They pay for the same guarantee with different currencies, one in energy and one in trust.
The practical consequence is speed. A payment settles in seconds for a fraction of a cent, which is why the ledger has always been pitched at moving money between institutions rather than at holding savings.
What we did not examine is who actually populates those trust lists today, and how that set changes. It is the question a reader would most want answered, and this page does not answer it.
Source GitHub https://api.github.com/repos/XRPLF/rippled, read 2026-08-25
Is the code actually open?
Yes, under the ISC licence, with 143 published releases and a repository open since November 2011. But the address the leading aggregator publishes, ripple/rippled, answers 301 Moved Permanently: the code now lives under XRPLF, a separate organisation from the company.
The redirect still works, so nothing looks broken, and that is exactly why nobody notices. What breaks is the meaning: the published link names the company, the code belongs to a foundation. On the one question people argue about most for this ledger, who owns the code, the reference every data site points at gives the wrong answer.
The same class of stale link affects two other entries here. USDC is listed under an address that also redirects, and BNB is listed under repositories that are not the chain at all. Three of ten, on the largest crypto data site.
Source GitHub API https://api.github.com/repos/ripple/rippled, read 2026-08-25
No audit report is published in the repository, and none is listed. As everywhere on this site, read that as an absence of reports rather than a verdict. Our rating scores that axis at zero because it counts what can be opened.
Source Trail of Bits et Informal Systems https://api.github.com/repos/informalsystems/audits/git/trees/main?recursive=1, read 2026-08-26
Is anyone still working on it?
Yes, and heavily. The repository took 367 commits from 24 distinct Git identities in the 90 days to 25 August 2026, the last one on the day we measured. Only Solana counted more among the ten profiles here, and the figure comes from the pagination header rather than from a page of objects.
That number is exact rather than capped, which matters more than it sounds. GitHub returns at most a hundred commit objects per page, so anything that hits that number is a ceiling, not a count. The real figure comes from the pagination header, and 367 is what the last page says, not what the first page could show.
Twenty-four identities is a wide bench for a ledger this old. It does not tell you who employs them, which is a different question and one we did not examine.
Source GitHub https://api.github.com/repos/XRPLF/rippled/commits?since=2026-05-27T00:00:00Z&per_page=1, read 2026-08-25
- The repository opens
Where does it actually run?
On its own ledger, which we checked responds: a public server returned version 106 540 030 on 25 August 2026. There is no second chain and no wrapped version to confuse, which makes XRP one of the simpler entries on this list to hold.
Singleness is worth stating because most of this list does not have it. A token that exists on several chains at once carries a trap for anyone sending it to the wrong one. Here the name means one thing, and the address either belongs to that ledger or it does not.
Source s1.ripple.com https://s1.ripple.com:51234/ — ledger_current, read 2026-08-25
XRP LedgerNetwork verified by reading its current block height on a public node.
What the token actually does
XRP pays the fee that every transaction destroys, and that fee is the ledger’s defence against flooding rather than a payment to anyone. The cap is 100 billion, all of it issued at the start, and a third of it is not in circulation.
The gap is the figure to sit with: 62,744,504,852 circulating against 99,985,627,691 issued, leaving 37,241,122,839 held somewhere. We can measure the gap. What we cannot tell you is who holds it, or under what release schedule, because we did not examine that question.
The contrast with a chain whose supply is almost entirely in circulation is the useful way to read it. Neither arrangement is wrong; they simply put a different amount of future supply in someone’s hands.
- What the token is forDirectly verified
- How many existThird-party supported
- Who received themNot verified
- Who can change the rulesNot verified
KLEAR3 rating
- Open code5
public repository · ISC licence · 143 published releases · 367 commits in 90 days
- Audits3
1 firm on the core · 2 audited scopes · report opened: 0 critical, 3 high, 3 medium · 3 critical or high findings found and fixed · code reviewed in the open: 367 commits in 90 days, 14 years in production
What holds it back audit stops at 2026-04-09: the code has moved since
- Business modelnot measured
What holds it back business model not established from a primary source
- Governance4
decided by xls-process, with no vote · 78 improvement proposals published · process open for 7 years
- Token alignment2
supply capped at 100 billion · 63% already in circulation
What holds it back emission schedule unknown
- Maturity5
14 years of public code · 1 network verified by us
We rate the protocol: how it is built, how much of it can be checked, how its token lines up. Never an investment. A high score is not advice to buy, and a low one is not advice to sell.
What we could not establish
Governance, audits, who populates the trust lists, and where the non-circulating third sits. We read the repository and the ledger, not the arrangements around them, and we do not describe what we have not opened. Each of those four would need documents rather than a ledger.
Two of those gaps point at the same place. A ledger that agrees by trust lists and holds a third of its supply off-market concentrates two very different kinds of influence, and a reader deciding what to think would want both instructed. Neither was, in this campaign.
Frequently asked questions
Does Ripple own the XRP Ledger?
We did not establish that, and the honest answer is narrower than either camp wants. What we can report is that the code lives under XRPLF, an organisation distinct from the company, and that the repository address published by the leading aggregator still names the company and redirects.
A redirect is a small technical fact with a large editorial one attached. Anyone following the published link lands on the right code under the wrong name, and nothing on the page tells them the organisation changed.
Ownership of a repository is also not the same as control of a ledger. Who commits code, who runs servers and who sits on the trust lists are three separate questions, and this page has only measured the first. Ownership and influence are not the same measurement.
Why is a third of the supply not circulating?
We measured the gap, not its cause. Just under two thirds of the issued supply circulates, against a hard cap of 100 billion, and the exact figures are in the token block above. Where the rest sits, and on what schedule it might move, we did not examine.
The figure is easy to read and hard to interpret, which is the recurring trap of supply numbers. A large non-circulating balance can mean a release schedule, a treasury, or holdings nobody plans to sell. The number alone separates none of those.
What it does change is arithmetic that gets quoted a lot. A capitalisation computed on circulating supply and one computed on issued supply differ by roughly a third here, and headlines rarely say which they used. Anyone quoting a market value here should say which of the two they took.
Is XRP faster than Bitcoin?
On settlement time, yes, by a wide margin: a few seconds against roughly an hour of confirmations. That comparison is real but incomplete, because the two ledgers buy their guarantee differently, one with energy and one with overlapping trust lists.
Speed is the easiest property to advertise and the least informative on its own. The question underneath it is what would have to happen for a settled payment to be undone, and the answer differs in kind, not in degree.
For a reader choosing between them, the useful framing is what each is meant to hold. One is designed as a settlement rail; the other has spent fifteen years being used as a reserve. Neither answers the other’s question well, and speed answers only one of the two. A reader picks the question first, then the ledger.
Next: our Solana profile shows another chain that chose speed and pays for it differently, and our Figure HELOC profile shows what an entry with no repository at all looks like.
Ask an assistant to summarise it and check what it claims.