Ripple News: The Critical Vote That Could Turn XRPL Into a Credit Market

Published by

Zafar Naik

April 18, 2026

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XRPL validators are casting votes on two amendments that would change what the XRP Ledger fundamentally does.

XLS-65, called SingleAssetVault, creates the pooled liquidity framework – a structure where multiple depositors contribute funds into isolated vaults, each holding one asset such as XRP or RLUSD. XLS-66, the LendingProtocol, sits on top of that. It enables fixed-term, uncollateralized loans issued directly at the protocol level, with creditworthiness assessed through off-chain underwriting rather than smart contracts.

Together they would make the XRPL a credit market, not just a payments network.

According to live data from XRPScan, XLS-65 currently has 8 validators voting yes at 22.86% consensus. XLS-66 has 7 validators at 20%. Both need 28 of 35 trusted validators to agree for two consecutive weeks before they can activate.

Both are still well short.

Payments Were Never the Full Story

At XRP Tokyo, Akinyele, Head of Engineering at RippleX, was direct about the direction.

“Payments was never the full story for the XRPL,” he said. “The real opportunity is actually more towards the ability for us to enable this notion of a full life cycle of capital. Issuance, trading, collateral, credit. And all of those things are coming together on the XRP ledger.”

His case for institutions was equally clear. XRPL features are native to the protocol, accessible through simple APIs with no smart contract expertise required. If an institution wants to build financial products on-chain, XRPL removes the need for deep blockchain expertise.

The protocol handles the complexity natively, so builders spend less time working around infrastructure and more time building the actual product.

Also Read: Ex-Ripple VP Who Built Japan’s XRP Strategy Launches $100M Fund With SBI

One Million Users Already Waiting for Yield

Robert Kiuru, COO of Xaman – the largest self-custodial XRP wallet – put the demand signal plainly.

“We have over a million users who manage billions of XRP in self-custody,” he said. “They’re not looking to sell their capital. The next unlock that we see from our data is users looking for yields on their XRP.”

The lending protocol is the direct answer to that.

Panos Mekras, co-founder of Anodos, described the consumer vision as making the underlying technology completely invisible. Users should be able to access yield products and banking services without ever knowing XRPL is running underneath.

The validator vote is still open and climbing. Whether it reaches 80% in the weeks ahead will determine how quickly that vision becomes usable.

Keep Reading: Ripple CEO Garlinghouse Says CLARITY Act Is Close as Frustration Peaks

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