For most of 2026, Ripple [XRP] has been seeing real network usage, which has helped the price stay above $1. All this while, the altcoin’s price has struggled to recover from its all-time high of $3.84, which was reached nine years ago.
Capital inflows into the ecosystem have come from various fronts. Recently, XRP ETFs have shown signs of revival, but the real-world asset (RWA) sector seems to be the quiet driver of XRP Ledger activity. Here is why.
XRP ETFs show signs of revival in August
In the month of July, XRP ETFs experienced weak inflows that were characterized by zero-flow and low-flow days. However, as the month came to an end, the products showed signs of revival.
Since the 29th of July, inflows have been positive for the past four consecutive days. Over these days, XRP ETFs have pulled more than $15 million in capital, with the largest inflow being $7.69 million.
Still, looking at the broader picture, the XRP ETF inflows were below par. The monthly totals have been falling. Over the past three months, these ETFs pulled $219 million, a fraction of what flowed into the XRP Ledger.
So what else was the source of capital inflows?
A look into XRPL’s RWA market activity growth!
During the past 90 days, XRP Ledger recorded net flows of more than $1.20 billion, including stablecoins. This placed XRP Ledger behind Hyperliquid’s [HYPE] HyperEVM, TRON [TRX], and Solana [SOL], respectively.
Apart from ETF inflows, the RWA sector played a quiet role as it gained momentum slowly.
That is, the represented tokenized asset value on the ledger exceeded $4.959 billion, a growth of 2%. This was about 1.25% of the total $398 billion in assets represented across all blockchains.
Despite XRPL’s small share of the overall RWA market, it represented considerably more capital than XRP ETFs. The capital dwarfs even the 3-month ETF inflows of $219 million.
On top of that, the number of RWA holders climbed over 25% over the past month, reaching 199. Additionally, stablecoin holders on the network rose to 60.24K.
In that case, it indicates that despite ETF inflows being back, the real institutional signal was the RWA activity building on the ledger itself.
All of these factors create a bigger demand for the native token since the economic impact is not one-to-one. This is because Ripple is simultaneously benefiting from XRP ETFs and as an RWA tokenization venue.
Final Summary
- XRP ETFs see four days of straight inflows, hinting at a potential return despite declining monthly totals.
- Ripple’s RWA holder increased by 25% as tokenized assets on the ledger nearly reached $5 billion.
