XRPL Stablecoins Hit $1.19B, but Fees Stay Tiny

Home » XRPL Stablecoins Hit $1.19B, but Fees Stay Tiny

September 29, 2026 0

Quick answer: As of September 25-29, 2026, the XRP Ledger holds roughly $1.19 billion in stablecoins, and Ripple’s RLUSD makes up more than 92% of that. Yet DefiLlama’s 24-hour snapshot shows the chain earned just $1,027 in fees, with about $45 million in DeFi total value locked. Those numbers don’t contradict each other. They show that XRPL is currently used more as a place to park and move dollar tokens than as a busy fee-generating marketplace. That gap matters if you’re trying to judge how much of XRP’s story is real usage and how much is narrative.

This isn’t a price call, and we won’t make one. It’s a look at what the on-chain data actually says this week, where the sources disagree, and what a careful reader should and shouldn’t conclude.

The Numbers, Side by Side

Here’s what the sources we checked show, with dates, because these figures move daily.

XRPL stablecoin market cap: $1.159 billion on September 25 (The Crypto Basic, citing DefiLlama), then about $1.19 billion on September 26 (CoinGape) and $1.191 billion on DefiLlama’s own stablecoin page at the time of our check.
RLUSD share: $1.099 billion, or 92.31% of the XRPL total, per DefiLlama. CoinGape put it at roughly $1.101 billion and “over 92%.”
Chain fees, 24 hours: $1,027, with 40,326 active addresses and $4.38 million in DEX volume, per DefiLlama’s XRPL page and echoed in The Crypto Basic’s September 28 report.
DeFi TVL: $45.41 million on DefiLlama; $44.63 million in the September 28 write-up.

The small differences between $44.63 million and $45.41 million are just timing. Both describe the same thing: a DeFi layer worth less than 4% of the stablecoin balance sitting on the same chain.

Why $1,027 in Fees Doesn’t Mean the Chain Is Dead

XRPL fees work differently from most networks, and that changes how you read a “chain revenue” chart. According to the XRP Ledger documentation, the reference transaction cost is 10 drops (0.00001 XRP), and the fee is “not paid to any party: the XRP is irrevocably destroyed.” There are no validators collecting tips and no auction for block space in normal conditions. The cost only climbs when the network is under load.

So when a dashboard says the chain “earned” $1,027, what it’s really tracking is a small amount of XRP getting burned. At a price near $1.48, that’s on the order of 690 XRP in a day. That’s our arithmetic, not a figure any source published, so treat it as a rough scale check. Compare it with the 1 billion XRP that Ripple can release from escrow each month (we covered the mechanics in our September 1 escrow release explainer) and you can see why the burn is a rounding error for supply. One long-running explainer on the XRP burn rate describes it as exactly that, a negligible fraction of the original 100 billion XRP.

That’s the first lesson. Fee revenue on XRPL was never designed to be a cash flow you could value like a stock’s earnings. Low fees are partly a feature.

The Second Lesson: A Stablecoin Base Isn’t the Same as Activity

Here’s where it gets more interesting. A stablecoin balance is a stock of value. Fees and DEX volume are flows. You can have a lot of one and very little of the other.

Imagine you run treasury operations at a small payments firm. You keep $2 million in a dollar token on XRPL because settlement is fast and the fee is a fraction of a cent. Most weeks you move it a handful of times. Your balance shows up in the market cap statistics every day. Your activity barely registers in fee data. Multiply that pattern across many holders and you get exactly what we’re seeing: a $1.19 billion base, $4.38 million in daily DEX volume, and a four-figure fee number.

It doesn’t prove that’s who’s holding the tokens. The sources don’t break down holders, and we can’t either. But it’s a reasonable reading of why the two metrics diverge, and it’s a good reminder not to treat a market-cap headline as a usage headline. As The Crypto Basic put it in its September 25 piece, the weekly increase “should not be interpreted as an equivalent amount of XRP purchases.”

Concentration Is the Real Story

The most useful detail in the data isn’t the total. It’s the mix.

According to DefiLlama’s breakdown, after RLUSD’s $1.099 billion the next largest stablecoins on the ledger are Valtorum USD at about $72.77 million, EUR CoinVertible at roughly $11.38 million, and USDC at $4.62 million. USDC actually fell about 21.9% over the month in The Crypto Basic’s September 25 numbers, though it rose in the last week.

CoinGape framed it bluntly, saying XRPL is now “effectively a single-issuer dollar rail.” That’s an outlet’s characterization, but the numbers back it up. When more than nine of every ten dollars of stablecoin on a chain come from one issuer, and that issuer is the company most closely tied to the chain’s development, the ecosystem is growing but it isn’t diversified.

Is that bad? Not necessarily. Early-stage networks are often lopsided. But it does mean XRPL’s stablecoin growth depends heavily on a single company’s minting and burning decisions. Which brings up a wrinkle worth noticing.

Where the Sources Disagree

Stablecoin figures never line up perfectly, and RLUSD is a good example, because it lives on two chains and gets tracked by several dashboards.

Total RLUSD supply: $2.38 billion on September 14 (The Crypto Basic, citing RWA.xyz), about $2.41 billion on September 26 (XRP Insights), roughly 2.49 billion tokens circulating per CoinSpectator citing CoinMarketCap, and “near $2.5 billion” in CoinGape.
The XRPL side: $1.013 billion on September 14, $1.07 billion in XRP Insights’ September 26 report, $1.101 billion in CoinGape, $1.099 billion on DefiLlama.
The Ethereum side: $1.369 billion on September 14, and $1.34 billion in the September 26 XRP Insights report.

So the spread between $2.38 billion and $2.49 billion isn’t an error, it’s a mix of different dates and different methodologies. The chain split matters more. On the two dated splits we found, Ethereum still holds the larger share of RLUSD, with the XRPL share rising. One outlet mentioned an earlier report that XRPL had overtaken Ethereum in RLUSD supply, but the September 14 and September 26 breakdowns we checked don’t show that. We’re flagging the conflict rather than picking the friendlier version.

There’s a second wrinkle. The September 14 report said Ripple burned $98.2 million of RLUSD in the prior seven days against $73.9 million minted, a net decline of $24.3 million. Supply grew again in the following two weeks, but it’s a reminder that issuance moves in both directions. A stablecoin total is not a one-way ratchet.

What This Does and Doesn’t Say About XRP

Here is the version that holds up, and it is more limited than most headlines will suggest.

What it supports: XRPL is being used as a settlement venue for a growing dollar-token balance. Active addresses of about 40,000 a day and a stablecoin base above $1 billion are not nothing. Ripple’s RLUSD has also become one of the faster-growing stablecoins this year according to RWA.xyz data as reported on September 14. If you follow Ripple’s infrastructure push, including the bank custody work we covered in the Ripple and Absa custody story, the stablecoin base is the piece of evidence that’s actually on-chain.

What it doesn’t support: any claim that stablecoin growth translates automatically into XRP demand. RLUSD is a dollar token. Holding it doesn’t require buying XRP, beyond the small reserve and fee amounts needed to transact. The relationship between the two is plausible but unproven, and the fee data shows it’s not showing up in burn volume yet. We looked at the broader stablecoin case in our earlier piece on RLUSD’s expansion and the bull case for XRP, and the caveat holds now as it did then.

And for price context: XRP traded around $1.49 with a $93.6 billion market cap on the morning of September 28, per CoinStats, after a 1.4% daily dip. Other reports the same day quoted $1.48 and $1.55, which shows how much a few hours can change the snapshot. Weekly spot ETF inflows of about $75.9 million through September 25 (also CoinStats) sit in a different data category altogether, and we tracked that story in our XRP ETF inflow streak analysis.

How to Read XRPL Data Without Fooling Yourself

A few habits will save you from most of the bad takes.

Check the date on every figure. DefiLlama pages show live snapshots, and articles quote them a day or two later.
Separate stocks from flows. Stablecoin market cap is a balance. Fees, volume, and active addresses are activity.
Look at issuer concentration. A total that comes 92% from one issuer tells a different story than one spread across five.
Don’t convert a market-cap change into “buying.” Minting a stablecoin isn’t the same as buying the chain’s native token.
Read the methodology. DefiLlama, RWA.xyz, and CoinMarketCap count differently, and none of them is wrong. They just answer slightly different questions.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much stablecoin supply is on the XRP Ledger?

About $1.19 billion according to DefiLlama and CoinGape in late September 2026. The figure was $1.159 billion on September 25, so it changes daily.

What share of XRPL stablecoins is RLUSD?

Roughly 92%. DefiLlama lists RLUSD at $1.099 billion, or 92.31% of the XRPL total.

Why are XRPL fees so low?

The ledger’s base transaction cost is 10 drops (0.00001 XRP), and the fee is destroyed rather than paid to validators. Costs only rise when the network is congested.

Does more RLUSD mean higher demand for XRP?

Not automatically. RLUSD is a dollar-pegged token, and holding it doesn’t require buying XRP beyond small amounts for reserves and fees. The link is plausible over time but isn’t shown in current fee or burn data.

Is RLUSD bigger on XRPL or Ethereum?

On the September 14 and September 26 breakdowns we checked, Ethereum still holds more (about $1.34-$1.37 billion versus roughly $1.0-$1.1 billion on XRPL). Sources vary, so check the current split before relying on it.

Key Takeaways

XRPL stablecoins stood at about $1.19 billion in late September 2026, with RLUSD around 92% of the total.
The same chain generated $1,027 in 24-hour fees and holds roughly $45 million in DeFi TVL, so a big balance doesn’t mean heavy activity.
XRPL fees are burned, not paid to validators, which makes fee revenue a weak yardstick for the network.
Sources differ on total RLUSD supply ($2.38 billion to nearly $2.5 billion) mostly because of dates and methodology.
Stablecoin growth isn’t proof of XRP buying. Watch fees, DEX volume, and issuer diversity over several weeks, not one snapshot.

Sources

Want the supply side of the picture? Our escrow release explainer and XRP/BTC ratio analysis pair well with this one, and you can subscribe to get the next data-first XRP breakdown as it lands.

Disclaimer: This article is for information and education only and is not financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile and you can lose money. Data changes quickly, so do your own research (DYOR) before making any decision.