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If a thriving blockchain ecosystem were a recipe, the ingredients would look like this:
- A consensus mechanism
- Four DeFi applications*
- A motivated founder/leader
- A native stablecoin (at least)
- Two legal entities (dev studio and foundation)
- A deck of tokens (minimum)
- Three guys responding online terminally ill
The secret ingredient would be one or more of the following: funding rounds, mid-cap memecoins, NFT collections, active venture funds, and third-party validator clients.
*Minimum DeFi apps required: DEX with token launchpads, collateralized lending/debt, liquid staking, oracle
So while there are now hundreds of smart contract platforms with half-decent market caps, not all of them are as bustling as the majors – Ethereum, Solana, and BNB.
Case in point: XRPL, which has almost $63 million in TVL in its on-chain applications. Ripple Labs is currently working hard to finalize its own recipe, more than 12 years after its launch.
Initially easy, XRPL has the consensus mechanism, although without the usual staking or mining, instead relying on trusted validators. And it already has a few symbolic bridges.
There are also two legal entities: Ripple Labs, headquartered in San Francisco, and the Estonian non-profit XRP Ledger Foundation, which was recently renamed the Inclusive Financial Technology Foundation.
Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse obviously checks the box of driven founder-figurehead.
When it comes to autoresponders, David Schwartz, longtime CTO of Ripple Labs, has built a following through strong autoresponder energy (check).
And anyone who’s ever tweeted anything remotely close to criticism has likely been visited by the
This leaves the four DeFi applications and a native stablecoin.
XRPL currently has four DeFi apps with 100 unique active wallets interacting with them daily – but three of them are DEXs and one is an NFT marketplace. As of last month, it has a native oracle, which should help attract builders.
And conveniently, XRPL is the exception to the rule (with no direct staking on XRP as part of the consensus), so it can do this. without the application of liquid staking in all cases.
The only ingredients left then are a dynamic lending protocol and a native stablecoin.
Fortunately, a stablecoin is on the way: Ripple USD (RLUSD), whose offering was just approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
It will be structured similarly to Circle’s USDT and Tether’s USDT, backed by cash and cash equivalents (primarily short-term US Treasuries).
With XRPL so close to acquiring all the necessary ingredients to truly break out, it should come as no surprise that DeFi veteran Robert Leshner is now open to supporting projects developing the Ripple ecosystem through his fund (getting bonus VC points!).
The piece de resistance of XRPL would then be a list of its own mid-sized memecoins, as is the case for the traditional fare.
Like it or not, these are cooking too, although the biggest is an XRP army-themed coin with a market cap of $45 million (still too small).
The bright side: Only $15 million worth of tokens were traded on XRPL in the last day. If RLUSD finds decent traction, watch this number only increase from here to completely complete the recipe.
Bellisimo!
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