Ripple USD (RLUSD) has grown into one of the larger regulated dollar stablecoins, with net circulating supply recently topping an all-time high of about $2.44 billion before settling near $2.42 billion. That expansion looks like a success story for Ripple’s dual-chain product.
A closer look at where the new tokens actually landed tells a more complicated story.
Most of the growth since July has accumulated on Ethereum, not on the XRP Ledger that Ripple has long promoted as its flagship settlement network.
RLUSD launched in December 2024 on both chains under a New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) trust-company charter.
The design was straightforward: XRPL would handle fast, low-cost enterprise payments, while Ethereum would connect the token to deep DeFi liquidity. For much of 2025,
Ethereum dominated.
At one point it held close to 88 percent of supply. XRPL then staged a notable catch-up. By late June 2026 the two networks were roughly even.
In early July the XRP Ledger briefly pulled ahead, holding roughly $863 million against Ethereum’s $676 million out of a total near $1.54 billion.
That lead did not last through the subsequent surge.
Total supply rose more than 50 percent in a little over a month as Ripple minted and redeemed tokens to meet demand, rebalance liquidity, and support exchange and lending markets.
Live trackers now show Ethereum with about $1.37 billion, or 56.5 percent of circulating RLUSD, versus $1.05 billion, or 43.5 percent, on XRPL.
The gap is not just a rounding error.
The bulk of the hundreds of millions of dollars added since midsummer has been issued or moved onto Ethereum.
The reasons are structural.
Ethereum still hosts the largest concentration of DeFi venues that can put a dollar stablecoin to work.
Aave’s lending contracts alone hold on the order of $330 million in RLUSD.
Curve pools and other automated market makers add further depth. Average balances on Ethereum run far higher than on XRPL, pointing to institutional and protocol-level holdings rather than a wide retail base.
XRPL, by contrast, shows more individual holders and trust lines, cheaper fees, and faster settlement—advantages that matter for payments but have not absorbed most of the newest issuance.
Ripple itself treats the two chains as complementary rather than competing.
The company mints and burns on both ledgers, parks inventory for market-making, and periodically rebalances.
Those treasury operations explain some of the visible transfers.
They do not change the destination of net new capital.
When demand spiked in August and early September, Ethereum received the larger share.
The result is an awkward split for a product often framed as proof of XRPL’s enterprise readiness.
RLUSD is growing quickly, is fully reserved, and is expanding toward corporate treasury use and additional networks.
Yet the chain that captured most of the post-July inflow is the one Ripple did not build. It now remains to be seen if XRPL can reclaim a majority as payment volume scales remains an open question. For now the numbers are clear: the stablecoin is larger than ever, and most of that extra size lives on Ethereum.