Ripple’s XRP Ledger Lending Plan Nears Validator Threshold

Ripple’s bank lending protocol on the XRP Ledger is gaining validator support but has not cleared the bar. The lending amendment has 22 votes and the vault amendment 23, against 29 required for two straight weeks. Meanwhile, Ripple’s national trust bank received final OCC approval, a charter that does not allow it to take deposits or make loans, so the lending mechanics still depend entirely on validators.

A vote that is advancing but still seven short

Ripple’s proposed lending system for banks and payment firms has picked up three validator votes in roughly three weeks. According to CoinDesk, LendingProtocol and its first patch, LendingProtocolV1_1, each had 22 positive votes on Wednesday, while SingleAssetVault, which creates the funds where lenders deposit their assets, had 23. The XRP Ledger’s default list contains 35 validators. Each amendment needs more than 80% support, meaning 29 validators, for two consecutive weeks before it takes effect. Lending is therefore seven votes from the threshold and the vault is six away.

On October 19, lending had 19 votes and the vault 21. The validator tracker snapshot from November 10 showed 22 and 23. New votes therefore arrived no later than Tuesday, and the count was unchanged by Wednesday. No individual votes are public: the dashboard shows only totals and states that there are “no per-validator rows on any public surface.” Validators who changed their minds cannot be identified.

Other proposals are moving in different directions. ConfidentialTransfer, which would hide token balances, fell from 22 to 21 votes, while DynamicMPT, which would let issuers change a token’s parameters after launch, dropped from 18 to 16. The pattern suggests validator support is uneven across proposals rather than moving as a bloc.

Developers are already preparing a further change. A cleanup patch to the lending code took effect on November 4 at ledger 108 112 129. Pull request No. 8685, still open at publication, proposes a third amendment, LendingProtocolV1_2. It would make the opening of a loan and its associated escrows fail together if another loan from the same broker completed first. Voting on the current version is therefore running in parallel with a change that could alter the technical scope.

Off-chain lending with no collateral

The proposed design relies on deposits and fixed-term loans. A lender deposits XRP or another token into a vault; a broker then lends the funds to a borrower, who posts no collateral. The ledger documentation says the system “relies on off-chain underwriting and risk management.” In practice, credit quality, risk management and the broker’s decisions are assessed outside the blockchain.

In this model, the first-loss capital supplied by the broker is the protection intended for depositors. According to the documentation, the broker’s judgment is the only protection specified. For readers used to fully overcollateralized DeFi lending, the shift is significant: security no longer rests on automated contracts and excess collateral, but on the strength of an identifiable counterparty.

Who the design is aimed at

Ripple has pitched the system to payment companies that need liquidity while a cross-border settlement is being processed. The design rests on three elements:

• fixed-term deposits and loans, backed by XRP or other tokens;
• a broker that selects borrowers and carries the first-loss capital;
• credit assessment carried out entirely off-chain.

A bank charter that does not unlock lending

Ripple announced in July that it had applied for a national bank charter, a decision shared on social media by chief executive Brad Garlinghouse. On December 12, 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted conditional approval to five national trust bank charter applications, including those of Ripple, BitGo, Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos. On October 26, 2026, Ripple announced, according to PYMNTS, final approval for Ripple National Trust Bank. Approved activities include managing RLUSD reserves, acting as trustee of those reserves for their holders, and custody of digital assets.

A national trust bank cannot accept deposits or make loans, unlike a conventional bank. Its business centers on holding assets, supervising client funds and providing settlement and fiduciary services. Ripple’s approval therefore does not replace the lending amendment: protocol loans remain subject to 29 votes held over two weeks.

“To the banking lobbyists – your anti-competitive tactics are transparent. You’ve complained that crypto isn’t playing by the same rules, but here’s the crypto industry – directly under the OCC’s supervision and standards – prioritizing compliance, trust and innovation to the benefit of consumers. What are you so afraid of?”

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO, Ripple

RLUSD continues to be issued by Standard Custody & Trust Company, Ripple’s trust company regulated by the State of New York. The new national bank adds federal supervision to its supporting activities without transferring issuance to Ripple National Trust Bank. The stablecoin will therefore fall under both the OCC and the New York Department of Financial Services.

Ripple is also seeking a Master Account at the Federal Reserve, which would provide access to the Fed’s payment infrastructure and allow RLUSD reserves to be held at the central bank. The sources do not name the same applicant: GFMag attributes the request to Ripple, CryptoSlate to subsidiary Standard Custody. Neither source says the account has been granted. In July, rating agency Bluechip had also assigned RLUSD its highest rating.

Following the OCC announcement, XRP traded near $2, up 0.8% over one hour and 0.6% overnight. That move reflected the regulatory approval, not the lending vote.

RLUSD: wider distribution, figures to reconcile

RLUSD’s expansion has come with several distribution and integration deals. The table below summarizes them based on the announcements reported by the sources.

Robinhood also plans to bring Ripple Treasury into its global cash management operations, while Ripple Prime is providing Bitstamp with loans and margin financing covering about 20 digital assets. Coinbase offers one-for-one conversion between the dollar and other supported dollar stablecoins, with deposits and withdrawals across three blockchain networks.

Cross River’s integration is designed to give fintechs access to RLUSD payments through a single API connection, including real-time settlement and cross-border transactions. Adam Goller, Head of Fintech Banking at Cross River, said:

“Businesses shouldn’t have to rely on several different providers to move money across the globe. Our partnership with Ripple eliminates that complexity and makes payments simpler.”

Adam Goller, Head of Fintech Banking, Cross River

According to Cross River, transactions on the XRP Ledger settle in three to five seconds for a fraction of a cent, around the clock. More than $1.3 trillion in value has reportedly settled on the network to date. The market figures need to be reconciled, however. CoinDesk reports RLUSD market capitalization above $2.5 billion, of which more than $1 billion was issued on the XRP Ledger. CryptoSlate says supply had passed $1 billion in November, up more than 30% in a month. The sources do not provide reference dates precise enough to tell whether these describe different periods or contradict each other.

Ripple has also built a broader financial stack: Ripple Prime for trading, Ripple Custody for institutional custody, Ripple Payments for real-time settlement, and RLUSD as its dollar-backed stablecoin. Custody combines multi-party computation (MPC) with a zero-trust architecture. That structure rests on 2025 acquisitions: Hidden Road in brokerage, Palisade in custody, GTreasury in treasury management and Rail in stablecoin payments. Ripple says it holds more than 85 licenses.

Outlook and scenarios

Three near-term paths stand out. In the first, lending reaches 29 votes and holds them for two consecutive weeks: a launch countdown could then be announced, and markets would need to assess off-chain credit quality and the broker’s first-loss capital. In the second, votes stall or decline, as DynamicMPT has done: lending stays blocked and Ripple’s growth leans more heavily on RLUSD integrations.

A third path concerns technical timing. If pull request No. 8685 is merged, LendingProtocolV1_2 would change how loans and escrows behave before the current version is even activated. Validators would then be voting on a scope that differs somewhat from the one they are backing today.

For now, the sources do not link the three new votes to any quantified move in the XRP price. RLUSD’s integrations, Ripple Prime’s activities and the regulatory developments form the institutional context around the amendment, but they are not presented as technical conditions for its activation.

Sources

• CoinDesk, November 12, 2026
• GFMag, Ripple in Banking License Push
• Yahoo Finance, Ripple receives surprising news
• PYMNTS, Ripple moves deeper into banking
• CryptoSlate, How XRP and RLUSD are making Ripple
• Cross River, press release

Cet article est publié à titre informatif et éducatif. Il ne constitue en aucun cas un conseil en investissement. Faites vos propres recherches (DYOR) avant toute décision.