Ripple's bank lending system on XRP Ledger needs seven more validator votes

Ripple's system for lending to banks and payment companies on the XRP Ledger won no new support this week. The XRPL lending protocol had 22 yes votes from validators on Wednesday, the same as on 10 November, CoinDesk reported, citing a public tracker of amendment votes. It needs 29.

Where the vote stands

An amendment goes live on the XRP Ledger only after more than 80% of the 35 validators on the default list support it for two weeks in a row. That works out to 29 validators. The counts for the amendments tied to lending:

• LendingProtocol and its patch LendingProtocolV1_1: 22 each, up from 19 on 19 October
• SingleAssetVault, which creates the deposit pools for lenders: 23, up from 21
• ConfidentialTransfer, which hides token balances: down from 22 to 21
• DynamicMPT, which lets issuers change token settings after launch: down from 18 to 16

The vaults need six more votes and lending needs seven. Lending can open only two weeks after both amendments reach 29. The tracker publishes counts and has no per-validator rows, so you cannot see from outside which validators changed their vote.

Developers keep patching the code in the meantime. A cleanup fix for parts of the lending code went live on 4 November. A pull request opened the same day proposes LendingProtocolV1_2: if another loan from the same broker lands first, the whole loan opening bundle with its escrows fails as one. We covered the v3.3.0 release that put confidential balances to the same vote, and the overflow bug fix that cleared the 80% bar.

How the loans work

Lenders deposit XRP or other tokens into a single asset vault. A broker lends from that vault on fixed terms, and borrowers post no collateral. Depositors rely on the broker's off-chain credit checks, its risk management and the first-loss capital it puts up to absorb defaults. Under the XRPL documentation, a broker without enough first-loss capital cannot charge its fees.

“Credit assessment and credit execution are separate functions.”

— Jasmine Cooper, Ripple, Ripple Insights blog post on the XRPL Lending Protocol

Quote source: Ripple, company blog, 29 June 2026.

Ripple pitches the system to payment companies that need cash while a cross-border settlement clears. In its example, a payment provider keeps reserves on-chain in RLUSD and borrows short-term from a pool to cover the gap. RLUSD is the dollar stablecoin Ripple issues. The protocol has no automatic liquidation, unlike most DeFi lending, so a default hits the broker's buffer first and the depositors after it.

XRP holders already have a different route: FXRP collateral in an RLUSD vault on Ethereum, where the deposit backs the loan.

What to watch

If you hold XRP and plan to deposit into a lending vault, check the vote tracker first. Even at 29 votes the earliest start comes two weeks later, and LendingProtocolV1_2 may need a vote of its own. When vaults open, look up who the broker is and how much first-loss capital it posted, because a default eats that buffer before it reaches your deposit.

Vote counts come from a public tracker cited by CoinDesk and change from week to week. This news report describes a protocol under vote and is not advice to deposit, lend or buy XRP.