This latest development underscores the engagement and adoption of the XRPL in the last few months.
The XRP Ledger (XRPL) has reached a significant milestone, with 90 million ledgers closed. It touched this level in the early hours of Monday, August 12. The network’s dominant explorer, XRPScan, spotted this milestone, noting that it underscores the collective effort of operators, developers, and the community. After surpassing this milestone, the 100 millionth ledger now marks a crucial target for the network.
XRP Ledger Adoption Reaches Wide
This latest development underscores the engagement and adoption of the XRPL in the last few months. At the beginning of July, Tokyo-based financial services company SBI Holdings announced the launch of Non-Fungible Token (NFT) services nicknamed “Myaku N!” on the XRP Ledger. Before this arrangement, Ripple Labs inked a strategic collaboration with Archax.
Markedly, Archax is a digital asset exchange regulated by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The alliance aimed to onboard more institutional investors seeking to tokenize Real-World Assets (RWA) on XRPL. At the time, Ripple acknowledged the positive effect that the collaboration would have on both XRP and the XRPL.
“Ripple is excited to see Archax’s vision of driving the adoption of blockchain and digital assets technology amongst financial institutions come to life while further underlining the credentials of the XRPL as one of the leading blockchains for RWA tokenization,” Markus Infanger, SVP at RippleX, noted.
These adoptions are instrumental to the recent milestone that the XRP Ledger has recorded. It is also worth recognizing the challenges that the protocol has equally faced. On August 1, the protocol’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Total Value Locked (TVL) saw a drastic drop in just 24 hours. The TVL went from over $12 million on Wednesday, July 31, to around $431,355 on August 1. This marked a rather unusual turn of events.
Such a dip in TVL suggested less capital and lesser returns within that time span.
Would SEC Appeal Judge Torres’ Verdict?
In other Ripple-related news, United States District Judge Analisa Torres imposed a $125 million fine on the firm last week. The Judge ordered this civil penalty for the violation of Federal Securities laws for the XRP sales to institutional investors. Additionally, she imposed an injunction against future securities law violations on Ripple Labs.
While the monetary penalty is much lower than the $2 billion that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) initially requested, it is far from the $10 million Ripple argued to pay. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse celebrated the judge’s decision nonetheless, noting that the court reduced the SEC’s penalty demand by a massive 94% while adding that the SEC “overplayed its hand.”
The XRP community and the broader crypto ecosystem believe the regulator may appeal some parts of the verdict. One aspect involves programmatic sales of XRP on secondary marketplaces. Should the SEC make this appeal move, it can further unsettle Ripple and its ecosystem.
In all, one unresolved issue is whether a written contract is required under the Howey Test to classify an asset as a security.
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