XRP Ledger is rapidly expanding in the real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation market, cracking an Ethereum-centred structure.

On May 31 (local time), blockchain outlet BeInCrypto reported that XRP Ledger took 15 months to reach $400 million in tokenised assets. Ethereum took 36 months to reach the same level, making XRP Ledger more than twice as fast.

RWA tokenisation refers to issuing and distributing traditional financial assets such as Treasury bonds, money market funds (MMF) and corporate bonds on a blockchain. Evernode, an XRP Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) company, saw XRP Ledger's growth not as a temporary spike but as a possible sign that criteria for choosing networks to issue tokenised assets are changing.

BNB Chain and Plume expanded faster than XRP Ledger, but their growth drivers differed. Growth on BNB Chain was concentrated in specific assets, and Plume started after the tokenisation market's operating model had become established to some extent. By contrast, XRP Ledger expanded at a pace close to the leaders without such shortcuts, according to an assessment.

Its growth rate has also stood out this year. Among 14 networks with more than $200 million in tokenised assets, XRP Ledger's pace of increase was tallied at more than twice that of Ethereum. Ethereum's growth rate since the start of the year was about 35 percent. Sei, Plume and zkSync grew faster than XRP Ledger, but their underlying scale was relatively small, making it easier to post high growth rates.

The way funds flowed in also differed clearly. Of XRP Ledger's new tokenisation activity over the past year, 96 percent was concentrated in just 20 days. This is interpreted as a large issuer moving a substantial amount of capital on-chain over a short period, rather than small amounts steadily accumulating over a long period. The report said all of XRP Ledger's three largest inflow days matched this single large-issuer pattern. By contrast, Ethereum's 20 largest inflow days accounted for about one-third of its annual growth, showing a structure in which a broader participant base enters in a relatively dispersed way.

Rankings also shifted among enterprise tokenisation chains. XRP Ledger has been classified, along with Algorand, Mantle and Aptos, as a network targeting institutional and enterprise tokenisation demand. As recently as a year ago, the tokenised asset size of those three networks was larger than XRP Ledger's. Algorand in particular was 2.6 times XRP Ledger on the same metric. Now, all three trail XRP Ledger.

XRP Ledger's growth also stands out in the long-term trend. Its first meaningful tokenisation data point was $3 million in September 2024, rising about 20 months later to about $404 million. That is about a 134-fold increase. Ethereum's tokenised asset size is $18.7 billion, leaving a wide gap in absolute scale. Still, the report focused on the speed at which XRP Ledger expanded from $3 million to $404 million. Compared with Layer 1 chains that entered an expansion phase around a similar time, it assessed that XRP Ledger showed the steepest absolute growth curve from a similar starting point.

Network design was cited as a reason institutions choose XRP Ledger. It offers 24-hour payments, 3 to 5 second finality, low costs below 1 cent, and built-in asset issuance and compliance functions tailored to financial market demand. The report said these elements align with conditions needed for regulated financial activity to operate on public infrastructure. It assessed that more cases are emerging in which institutions choose XRP Ledger for serious tokenisation work in pilots and partnerships.

A key market point is whether this growth will remain a one-off large issuance or lead to a sustained expansion of the issuance base. So far, the observed trend is that institutional issuers, rather than retail-led diffusion, are leaning toward XRP Ledger. As RWA tokenisation competition shifts beyond speed toward attracting issuers and long-term operational capability, the possibility is growing that leadership among networks will be decided at that point.

NEW XRP DATA ANALYSIS: https://t.co/Lez9qqpZXS By current size, XRP ranks #11 in tokenized RWA value and #5 by market cap. By the growth and velocity metrics we looked at, XRP sits in the top tier. The rankings reflect yesterday's market. The data shows where recent activity… pic.twitter.com/6laZKUzRtt