The long-time creator of the XRP Ledger says that XRPL has a small shot in 2026 to jump to the top of the chain in terms of spending and activity, but only if Ripple and the XRPL Foundation stop “playing it safe” and prioritize frictionless consumer onboarding, real-world payment gateways, and a fast, aggressive funding engine.
Why 2026 Needs To Be The Year Of XRP
Panos Mekras, founder of Anodos Finance, wrote in X that the network’s current metrics are a warning sign: “only a few thousand active users,” DEX daily volume “usually under $10m,” and AMM TVL “struggling under $50m” nearly two years after launch. The target, he said, should be clear: “get into the top 3 networks when it comes to volume, revenue and overall activity.”
Mekras said that the money gap is ultimately a problem of infrastructure and distribution. XRPL remains an “isolated island,” he writes, with limited bridges to other chains and “separate, high-cost gateways” instead of seamless entry/exit roads. His order is a direct integration of common rails: “native support for major rails like VISA and Mastercard directly within the applications based on XRPL” so that users can issue cards and use XRPL goods in real time.
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He also framed the stablecoin arrangement as a competitive barrier: RLUSD reaching a $1 billion market cap in its first year is “good,” he said, but “$1B is not good enough” against those in the $5 billion to $180 billion position that are already automatic onramps.
He also argued that XRPL lost its consumer narrative after Ripple’s 2014 pivot towards payments and B2B. That change, he said, trained the market to associate XRP primarily with the Ripple partnership rather than the ledger itself, leaving many owners unaware of XRPL’s native DEX and token features. He cited a 2023 response from Ripple CTO David “JoelKatz” Schwartz, who said the DEX ecosystem was strong at the time of the pivot, explaining “more than $8 million per day in exchanges and payments” that Ripple can “100% guarantee” as real activity.
By 2026, Mekras wants XRPL to be positioned less as “payments” and more as a financial stack at the protocol layer where core elements are built rather than tied together through smart contracts, with “integrated spending” and “one DEX to rule them all.” The main pillar is “XRPFi,” which he described as an effort to turn “$100B+ of dormant XRP into a productive, yield-generating currency” by pushing XRP currency into regulated markets.
He cited Flare’s FXRP using FAssets as a route to smart contracts without “middlemen,” and highlighted Axelar & Midas’ mXRP as an “institutional-grade liquid foundation token” that could enable “5–10% APY,” creating a liquid XRP variant that can be used as collateral and AMM currency.
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The consumer strategy, he said, should be “invisible infrastructure”: applications that are used where users never see the crypto mechanics. “If the user is asked to ‘Add Trust Line’ or ‘Have enough XRP for reserves’ we have already failed,” he wrote. “The interface must be different from the modern systems that people already trust.”
To enable that, he called Funding and Savings (XLS-68) a technology priority so that developers can fund savings accounts and payments, coupled with Batch Transactions to compress multi-step actions into a “single, atomic signature.”
Mekras’ sharp criticism was aimed at grants. He called Ripple’s 2022 commitment of 1 billion XRP to support the development of XRPL “Air Fund,” which estimates less than 50 million dollars, less than 5% to active developers in four years. “A grant program that takes 3 months to approve $50,000 and can take another 3 months to get money is not a growth engine, it’s a bureaucracy,” he wrote, arguing that XRPL needs multi-billion dollar checks from proven teams, direct liquidity incentives, and collective developer experience.
His conclusion was a call for a “war chest mentality” in 2026: distribution of funds and liquidity, fixing friction on board, and creating consumer products where XRPL is just the end. Otherwise, he warned, the ecosystem risks remaining a technically competent network that still can’t attract persistent users, developers, or capital at scale.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.10.
The featured image was created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
