Ripple’s RLUSD Growth Strategy Unveiled: Ethereum L2 Expansion Slated for 2026

Ripple just laid out its playbook for RLUSD—and it involves a major move onto Ethereum's turf.

The Layer-2 Gambit

Forget staying in your own lane. Ripple's strategy hinges on launching a dedicated Layer-2 network on Ethereum by 2026. This isn't about coexistence; it's about capturing liquidity and users where they already are. The plan bypasses building a new ecosystem from scratch and instead plugs directly into the largest smart contract platform's existing infrastructure.

Why Ethereum? Why Now?

The logic is brutally simple: go where the money is. An Ethereum-based L2 gives RLUSD instant access to a massive, established DeFi landscape—lending protocols, decentralized exchanges, yield farms—the whole circus. It turns the stablecoin from a potential walled-garden asset into a cross-chain contender overnight. The 2026 timeline suggests a build-out, not a rushed job, aiming for integration when it can make the most noise.

The Growth Calculus

This is a textbook market expansion play. RLUSD gets to tap into Ethereum's developer base and user trust while leveraging Ripple's institutional connections. It's a hedge, too—diversifying beyond the XRP Ledger and betting big on multi-chain interoperability as the future standard. Because let's be honest, in crypto, betting on one chain is a great way to end up a nostalgic footnote.

The Bottom Line

Ripple isn't just announcing a product roadmap; it's signaling a strategic pivot. By planting its flag on Ethereum, it's acknowledging where the real battle for stablecoin supremacy will be fought. The move could seriously juice RLUSD's adoption metrics—if they can execute without the delays that make crypto roadmaps look more like hopeful fiction than engineering plans. After all, in finance, a promise for 2026 is just a fancy way of saying 'trust us, the market will be totally different by then.'

Ripple Targets Broader Blockchain Integration

In a press release issued on Monday, Ripple and Wormhole detailed their plans to initiate testing on several notable L2 networks, including Optimism (OP), Base, Ink, and Unichain. 

The collaboration will leverage Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) standard, which is designed to ensure efficient movement of liquidity across various blockchain ecosystems while allowing Ripple to maintain native control over RLUSD.

Originally launched on both the XRP Ledger (XRPL) and Ethereum, RLUSD aims to enhance cross-chain functionalities and decentralized finance (DeFi) opportunities. 

Jack McDonald, Senior Vice President of Stablecoin at Ripple, emphasized the significance of stablecoins in the DeFi landscape, stating:

Stablecoins are the gateway to DeFi and institutional adoption. RLUSD is designed from the ground up to be the trusted, liquid medium necessary for users to seamlessly enter, interact with, and exit the entire digital asset economy.

The executive also highlighted that by launching RLUSD as the first US Trust Regulated stablecoin on these L2 networks, Ripple is also setting a standard where compliance meets on-chain efficiency. Looking toward, Ripple plans to launch RLUSD on additional chains, pending final regulatory approval. 

RLUSD Becomes Third-Largest US-Regulated Stablecoin

Notably, RLUSD has achieved a market capitalization of $1.3 billion in less than a year, making it the third-largest stablecoin among US-regulated options, according to CoinGecko data. 

Positioned for compliance with the GENIUS Act, RLUSD’s circulating supply surged by 28% in November alone, crossing the billion-dollar threshold. It currently ranks behind only Circle’s USDC and PayPal’s PYUSD in the US-regulated dollar tokens. 

In a significant development in November of this year, Ripple also initiated a new pilot program with traditional finance giants Mastercard, WebBank, and crypto exchange Gemini aimed at facilitating credit card transaction settlements using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger. 

This partnership allows WebBank to send RLUSD over the XRPL for instant settlement of daily payment obligations with Mastercard, eliminating the traditional delays associated with bank ACH transfers.

Ripple’s president, Monica Long, described this pilot as a “meaningful step” toward demonstrating how regulated digital assets can expedite institutional payment processes. 

XRP, which is also associated with the company, is trading at $1.90. This represents a 5% drop over the past 24 hours, in line with the broader correction in the crypto market cap, which has seen Bitcoin (BTC) and other leading altcoins resume the downtrend witnessed over the past two months. 

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com