Japan's financial group SBI Holdings is joining hands with the Solana Foundation to build an onchain financial market, fuelling debate within the XRP community over possible changes in its relationship with Ripple. So far, there has been no confirmation that SBI is scaling back or ending cooperation with Ripple.

On July 15, blockchain outlet U.Today reported that SBI Holdings announced it had signed a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation and would build an onchain financial market with Japan as its base.

Under the cooperation, SBI R3 Japan will change its name to SBI Solana Global. Along with existing shareholders SBI Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), the Solana Foundation will newly join. The new entity plans to pursue stablecoins, real world assets (RWA), cross-border payments, onchain financial services for institutional investors and construction of payment infrastructure for the AI era, based on the Solana blockchain.

The controversy began because Solana appeared at the forefront as core infrastructure in the statement, while XRP and the XRP Ledger (XRPL) were not mentioned.

SBI has been seen as a leading strategic partner of Ripple. The two set up SBI Ripple Asia in 2016 to pursue a payments business in Asia, and SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao (기타오 요시타카) has publicly expressed support for Ripple and XRP several times. SBI has directly invested in Ripple, and its affiliate SBI VC Trade has established itself as a leading XRP-friendly exchange in Japan.

Against that backdrop, the XRP community has continued to react with concern. Some users posted on X, formerly Twitter, asking, "What happens to XRP?" and "Is it still true that SBI supports Ripple and XRP?" Others said, "SBI's use was the core logic behind XRP's rise, so why did it make a Solana-centric announcement?"

Others in the community also urged caution against overinterpreting the news. Crypto lawyer Bill Morgan said on X, "The XRP community does not need to interpret this news excessively," adding, "This announcement is positive news for the crypto industry overall, and especially good news for Solana and XDC, but it is not bad news for anyone."

SBI explained that the purpose of the venture is to connect Japan's regulated financial system with the Solana ecosystem. It plans to foster new business pillars including the issuance and distribution of yen-based stablecoins such as JPYSC, tokenised real assets, cross-border payments and financial services for institutions.

The announcement is drawing market attention because SBI's new onchain finance business is designed around Solana. Still, based only on what has been disclosed so far, it is hard to conclude that SBI is scaling back its existing cooperative relationship with Ripple or changing its XRP strategy.

The market is therefore watching whether the cooperation is a separate project to expand the Solana ecosystem or whether it will lead to a division of roles between XRP and Solana in payments and institutional finance businesses.

"What happened to XRP?"