Hugo Philion (휴고 필리온), chief executive of blockchain network Flare, said the potential of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) lending market is greater than market expectations and that the company will prove it first through its infrastructure.

On Oct. 7, blockchain media outlet U.Today reported that Philion said David Schwartz, a former Ripple chief technology officer (CTO), is underestimating the scalability of XRPL lending.

The key point is that lending functions can be implemented through external infrastructure while XRPL’s own upgrade is delayed. Philion said XRPL’s native lending protocol, XLS-66, is currently stuck at the validator voting stage, but Flare has already built a structure to bypass it.

Philion said Schwartz is very talented, but even he is underestimating the market. He added that many users are also overlooking the scale of infrastructure outside XRPL.

Flare pointed to protocol-managed wallets and Flare Confidential Compute as its tools. Philion said this allows applications to be built with the desired logic and provides XRPL with the smart contract environment it wants. In that case, added functions work like XRPL’s native functions, and asset holders can lend coins directly from native wallets without going through a cross-chain bridge.

Ripple’s XLS-66 assumes an off-chain underwriting structure handled by Clearpool and Cicada, but it is still awaiting approval. In contrast, Flare’s infrastructure has approved RLUSD loans worth $7.2 million backed by 10.8 million wrapped XRP.

Market concentration is high. In the Morpho pool, just three addresses hold 93 percent of total debt, and Sentora is providing liquidity. Given RLUSD’s total supply of $2.4 billion, the overall scale is limited, but Philion said this structure instead shows that real demand exists.

Philion also said the company has plans for a lending service for the XRPL ecosystem. He made clear that rather than wait for Ripple’s large-scale ledger upgrade, it will deploy programmable logic in its own domain. That also revealed a strategy to draw new financial flows into the Flare ecosystem.

The remarks show a competitive dynamic over whether an external execution layer can absorb lending demand first, separate from XRPL’s internal standard approval process. Key points to watch include whether XLS-66 is approved and how much the Flare approach can lift XRPL users’ demand for asset management.

@JoelKatz thinks that lending on the XRPL will be big. As incredibly bright as David is - I’d wager that even he is underestimating quite how big it can be! ;)