Ripple’s own stablecoin story doesn’t match the home-field claim.
Protos reports that the majority of Ripple USD (RLUSD) supply lives on Ethereum. Of roughly $1.63 billion worth of tokens in circulation, $879 million sits on Ethereum while $760 million sits on the XRP Ledger. Protos frames this as a 53-to-47 split in Ethereum’s favor.
That gap widened, then narrowed, but never fully flipped.
Supply split: Ethereum hosted most of RLUSD through 2025
Protos says RLUSD launched in December 2024 with a New York State Department of Financial Services license. But Ripple didn’t rely on XRPL alone for issuance. Protos reports that Ripple issued RLUSD natively on two blockchains, because it “Unable to fulfill its launch on just the XRPL.” Ripple also pitched XRP Ledger as the “home” venue anyway.
By October 2025, Protos says about 88% of RLUSD supply lived on Ethereum. That left about $91 million on XRPL.
By the end of 2025, Ethereum still held about 81% of the supply, roughly $1 billion versus $235 million on XRPL. Protos adds that today, after 18 months of work, XRPL has risen to a 47% share. In other words, the direction moved. The destination still isn’t XRPL.
Here are the key supply markers Protos provides:
| Date or snapshot (per Protos) | RLUSD on Ethereum | RLUSD on XRPL |
|---|---|---|
| Approx now | $879M of ~$1.63B (53%) | $760M of ~$1.63B (47%) |
| Oct 2025 | ~88% | $91M |
| End of 2025 |
DeFi liquidity: Ethereum’s apps pull RLUSD deeper
Protos argues the supply split has a practical reason. On Ethereum, RLUSD plugs into DeFi markets that look bigger than what’s available on XRPL.
Protos points to Ripple putting RLUSD into Aave V3 in April 2025. According to Protos, users can deposit RLUSD for yield or borrow against other Ethereum-based digital assets. By late 2025, Protos says nearly two-thirds of all RLUSD had been deposited into Aave.
Protos also cites other Ethereum DeFi venues. It names Curve and Morpho as platforms that have vaulted hundreds of millions more of Ethereum-based RLUSD.
It’s not just balances. Protos says transaction activity reinforces the same conclusion. RLUSD transfer volume hit a record $18.4 billion in Q1 2026, and most of that wasn’t XRPL transactions. Protos attributes that to Ethereum’s “wealthier” DeFi community, with “deeper liquidity pools.”
The economics of “home” vs “host”
If XRPL is the advertised settlement home, XRPL tokenholders don’t capture much of the stablecoin value.
Protos writes that every RLUSD transfer on the XRP Ledger burns a fee of approximately one hundred thousandth of 1 XRP, described as worth less than $0.0001. In Protos’s framing, that means XRP tokenholders benefit in discounts measured in fractions of fractions of a cent for settlements, even as RLUSD dominates Ethereum.
Protos also frames this as a mismatch between marketing and outcomes. Ripple pitched RLUSD as an institutional settlement token with its home on XRPL. But Protos’s numbers say Ethereum has been the stablecoin’s real engine.
Protos adds a broader market footnote. It says Ripple billionaires’ RLUSD captures less than 0.04% of the stablecoin market.
Multi-chain strategy helped Ethereum win the first act
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has pushed a multi-chain thesis. Protos says Ripple even used the Wormhole cross-chain bridge to get RLUSD onto Ethereum layer-2 networks like Coinbase’s Base.
Meanwhile, RLUSD reserves are described by Protos as blockchain agnostic, sitting off-chain with the Bank of New York Mellon. Protos says Ripple named BNY Mellon as a primary custodian in July 2025.
So the stablecoin’s infrastructure doesn’t depend on XRPL. The stablecoin’s utility does.
And Protos offers the sharpest line in the piece: the growth story in Ripple’s orbit is a stablecoin whose largest home is Ethereum, the network XRP had hoped to displace.
So what changes now
XRPL’s share did rise in Protos’s telling. Protos says it worked itself up to a 47% share after 18 months. That’s progress.
But the deeper lesson Protos points to is structural. RLUSD’s biggest DeFi destinations sit on Ethereum. The transfer volume and the vaulting behavior follow liquidity. Fees on XRPL, meanwhile, are tiny per transaction under Protos’s description.
For readers watching RLUSD, the headline isn’t that Ripple is multi-chain. It’s that the “home” blockchain didn’t become the stablecoin’s primary venue, at least not yet. The custody and the reserves don’t force a winner. Demand does.