Ripple’s XRP Ledger Achieves Record 80 TPS Amid Q1 Inscription Frenzy Without Issues

With the broader market recovery this year, the network activity XRP Ledger (XRPL) also surged across nearly all metrics, with active addresses and transactions increasing by 37% and 113% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), respectively, according to Messari’s latest report.

A significant portion of this activity stemmed from a concentrated group of approximately 45,000 accounts, which collectively sent over 30 million transactions to a single one, primarily for inscription-related activities.

Inscriptions Boost XRPL Network Activity

Inscriptions, a transaction type that gained popularity on Bitcoin in early 2023, have since spread to other major networks, including XRPL, often causing significant activity spikes.

Despite the high transaction volumes, XRPL demonstrated resilience, handling over 80 transactions per second for an entire day without network issues, as per Messari. The total number of accounts rose by 150,000, a 3.1% increase to 5.15 million.

Although new addresses decreased by 12.4% QoQ to 183,000 due to a surge in Q4 when inscription activity began, there was a 29.8% annual increase from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024. Additionally, deleted addresses increased by 55.9% QoQ to 33,000 as inscription activity slowed.

The overall increase in active addresses, particularly the 92% QoQ rise in unique senders, highlighted the impact of inscription activities, with unique senders surpassing unique receivers for the first time since Q1 2022.

DeFi, Stablecoins on XRPL

The total market cap of fungible tokens, referred to as Issued Currencies, fell by 16% QoQ to $142 million. Among the over 3,300 assets listed on the XRPL, Sologenic (SOLO) was the leading token, making up 42% of the total market cap. The top three tokens together collectively represented 65% of the total market cap.

Meanwhile, stablecoins and wrapped tokens are notably popular on XRPL when measured by the number of holders, in comparison to other tokens. Gatehub and Xumm have collaborated to provide 14 digital assets on XRPL.

So far, stablecoins on XRPL have not reached the adoption levels of major ones on other networks, like Tether’s USDT or Circle’s USDC. This might, however, change with Ripple’s recent announcement to launch a USD-pegged stablecoin on both the XRPL and Ethereum, leveraging XRPL native functionality and ERC-20 token standards, respectively.

The stablecoin will be fully backed by US dollar deposits, short-term US. treasuries, and other cash equivalents, with monthly third-party attestations. This initiative could potentially trigger a significant liquidity event.