XRP Beyond Payments: Flare Exec Explains New Opportunities

During a recent episode of “$XRP in a Minute” hosted by Ripple, Flare co-founder and CEO Hugo Philion responded to the question “Can $XRP generate yield?” by highlighting opportunities in DeFi.

$XRP is well known for its payments capabilities, but according to Flare co-founder and CEO Hugo Philion, it has more to offer. Philion stressed Flare’s goal of turning $XRP into a collateral asset instead of merely a transaction payment asset on the $XRP ledger.

Philion answered in the affirmative to the question of whether $XRP can be used in strategies involving lending and vaults. The Flare CEO highlighted how $XRP holders can participate in such strategies involving lending and vaults.

One of the key opportunities, Philion says, is using $XRP as collateral for yield strategies. According to the Flare CEO, borrowing against $XRP opens the door to a variety of yield-generating strategies. “So by taking your $XRP and turning it into a collateral asset, you can then get yield through borrowing and then relending out those dollars,” Philion said.

$XRP utility continues to grow

The discussion comes as $XRP‘s utility continues to grow, both directly and indirectly, with the $XRP Ledger feature set increasing, particularly for institutional DeFi use cases including tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), stablecoins, and decentralized liquidity.

The $XRP Ledger finished Q1 2026 with a real-world asset (RWA) market valuation of $2.25 billion (about 124.1% increase quarterly), making it the seventh largest network by RWA market cap. Currently, the $XRP Ledger has moved up to fourth spot, according to a recent Messari Q1 2026 report.

Currently (excluding stablecoins), 18 distributed RWAs and 312 represented RWAs are tracked by RWA.xyz on the XRPL, though more integrations are planned.

In May 2026, the XRPL was home to a landmark settlement transaction, connecting it to interbank settlement rails. This was the first tokenized U.S. treasury settlement across borders and banks in near real time outside traditional banking windows.