In the evolving landscape, the narrative around XRP’s real use case is increasingly standing out in a market often driven by speculation. The altcoin is embedded in live financial workflows, particularly in cross-border payments and liquidity management. Its role as a bridge asset allows institutions to move value quickly, cheaply, and at scale, solving real inefficiencies in the global payments system. Why XRP Functions As A Bridge Asset In Global Payments This design choice is centered on understanding why its utility will drive price appreciation. An analyst known as SMQKE revealed on X that the core of this model is payment utility. XRP is designed to operate within the global payment infrastructure, and Ripple has integrated with existing financial systems to enhance speed, reduce costs, and improve settlement efficiency. Related Reading: Pundit Shares ‘Urgent Update’ With XRP Community – Here’s What He Said Through Ripple’s integrations, financial institutions adopt the network, and the altcoin is utilized directly to move value across borders. From a price perspective, this document outlines how institutional settlement activity has created a sustainable demand for XRP, supporting price appreciation through real transaction flow. Analyst Vet has highlighted the areas where XRP and the XRP Ledger were great in 2025. One is smart contracts, and a significant amount of development went into getting the alpha testnet live, where individuals can currently deploy and play around with it. Community awareness toward this also increased meaningfully. On the DeFi front, momentum came out strongly from late 2024, especially driven by meme coins. However, the activity dried out over the year. Baseline DEX activity is now higher than it was before the DeFi wave, but this raises the potential for more growth in 2026. Furthermore, interoperability has made tangible progress as Wormhole went live, Axelar live became operational, and yield-bearing issued assets were bridged onto the XRPL. Currently, Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) appear to be a key enabler for trust-minimized bridging. On the application side, existing XRPL projects and wallets doubled down. Apps became more polished, with new feature-rich and better integrations, while no new app took over the community. At the same time, tokenization stood out as one of the strongest verticals. RLUSD was a major milestone, complemented by smaller launches of other stablecoins and tokenized funds. The distribution channel of these assets needs a lot of work, which directly ties back to application-layer development. That’s why this year should be viewed as the foundation for 2026. How Fee Destruction Changes Economic Incentives Ripple’s XRP is designed to compete in low-fee markets and has built programmable economics. According to Xfinancebull, every transaction fee is destroyed; it is not paid to validators, no middleman, and there is no inflation loop. Related Reading: Flare Launches New Way For XRP Investors To Earn This is because XRPL is designed to scale global payment rails, not enrich toll collectors. That’s why XRP is one of the few chains where volume is value, not congestion. Xfinancebull stated that this isn’t a trading feature, but it’s a monetary policy shift hidden at the protocol layer. Featured image from Pxfuel, chart from Tradingview.com
The proposed protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify sender–receiver relationships without revealing identities.
ZKPs could become the backbone of a new era of trusted AI and digital identity, giving individuals and organizations a way to interact safely and transparently across platforms and borders, argues Evin McMullen, CEO and co-founder of Billions Network.
Self raised $9 million to expand its zero-knowledge identity platform and introduced a rewards program aimed at driving on-chain verification adoption.
The milestone builds on the network’s incentivized testnet, which went live in July and stress-tested Boundless’ architecture under real-world conditions.
The incentivized testnet, which the team is calling its Mainnet Beta, will let users participate in the network's decentralized marketplace for ZK computation.
Zero-knowledge proofs are a game-changing innovation with profound implications for how users transact business, but can they replace the conventional contract?
The new cryptographic system lets users prove they’re old enough to use restricted applications without giving more information than required.
BitcoinOS contributor and crypto OG Edan Yago describes forks on Bitcoin as like "open-heart surgery."
In contrast to World’s iris scanning, Humanity’s palm scans are more user-friendly and maintain a high level of security, according to Humanity’s founder.
AI-focused Ethereum layer-2 Mode is the latest network to bridge to Bitcoin in an attempt to get access to deep wells of liquidity held in BTC.
SingularityNET and Mina Foundation join forces to enhance decentralized AI using zero-knowledge proofs for secure, privacy-preserving innovations.
Far from making zero-knowledge rollups obsolete, the Beam Chain would make them work better, says Polygon. zkSync builder Matter Labs is also bullish.
Namechain, as the layer-2 blockcain is called, will use a zero-knowledge rollup for scaling and is likely to go live around the end of 2025.
The goal of allowing greater utility on the Bitcoin blockchain is one of almost existential importance, according to Citrea
A longtime regular on the crypto scene, Sovryn and BitcoinOS founder Edan Yago learned the importance of financial sovereignty at an early age.
The crypto-adjacent tech is meant to give the Argentine capital's 3.6 million residents greater control over their personal data.
The purchase is part of a deal with hardware maker Fabric, that is also producing custom zero-knowledge chips for Polygon's AggLayer.
The migration from POL to MATIC will also bring in some tokenomics changes with a new emission rate of 2%.
StarkWare used its new STARK verifier on the Signet network, a testing environment for Bitcoin, in a proof-on-concept project designed to demonstrate what the oldest blockchain might be capable of were the pending "OP_CAT" technical proposal to get adopted.
Establishing the new role, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal will increase focus on growing ZK solutions, including Polygon CDK.
The zkEVM, called Kakarot, already in testing, will be available via the Starknet Stack.
The convergence of ZK-proofs and decentralized identity systems could create more compliant privacy-preserving protocols, without sacrificing user privacy.
A key element of the upgrade is to enable a new place for storing data on the blockchain – referred to as "proto-danksharding," which gives room for a dedicated space that is separate from regular transactions, and at a lower cost.
By plugging into the AggLayer, Astar users will have access to the liquidity in the Polygon ecosystem, allowing cross-chain transactions between Astar and Polygon zkEVM, making the experience feel like a single chain.
The Taiko project, distinguished for its "based sequencing" architecture, is one of several competing for relevance among a deep field of Ethereum layer-2 networks.
The new open source ZK prover aims to reduce latency and reduce transaction costs for end users.
Circle STARKs are supposed to accelerate the proving process for zero-knowledge rollups, according to a white paper published by Polygon Labs and StarkWare.
Although the intersection of Web3 and AI has great potential, there is a lot of confusion about this emerging technology in the market today. Mapping out the GPU supply chain, layers of the tech stack, and various competitive landscapes can help investors better understand the ecosystem and make more informed investment decisions, says David Attermann, at M31 Capital.