The protocol has two parts. A Single Asset Vault pools a single asset, and the lending layer converts that pooled money into loans with set terms. Both remain proposals, defined in technical drafts known as XLS-65 and XLS-66, and remain subject to approval by the validators who manage the network. Features are available for testing on a development network, but are not available.
The use that Ripple leads is short-term financing. A payments company holding reserves in RLUSD, its stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, could need cash to fund outbound payments before a cross-border deal settles two days later.
Instead of tapping into a bank line of credit or selling assets, you could borrow against the incoming settlement through an approved pool, with repayment automatically applied.
This is separate from XRP, the token the network is best known for, and RLUSD, which is one of the assets such a system could lend against. It is an infrastructure aimed at institutions rather than a product that retail users would touch directly.
However, Ripple is also entering a crowded field. On-chain lending is already running at scale through protocols like Aave, Compound, Maple, and Clearpool, which together hold billions in deposits.
However, Ripple says those systems were built around crypto-native governance, where a protocol can change its risk rules through community votes, which it says institutions cannot guarantee in advance. Their counterattack is to fix the lending mechanics at the base layer of the network so that behavior doesn’t change beneath a lender, while keeping the network public rather than isolating it from a closed group as some permissioned systems do.
