XRPL Flips Solana in $1.76B RWA Tokenization — With Just 22 Holders

The XRP Ledger has overtaken Solana in real‑world asset tokenization value, excluding stablecoins, with $1.756 billion on‑chain — but holds the lead with just 22 holders. Solana counters with 285,000 RWA holders and $2.18 billion in monthly transfer volume. This is not a fluke; it is a deliberate institutional strategy. We examine the represented vs. distributed asset divide, the Permissioned Domains architecture, and why Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse calls XRP the “North Star” as Aviva Investors and a $280 million diamond deal land on XRPL.

The $1.76 Billion Flip: XRPL Surpasses Solana in RWA Value

On February 12, 2026, data from RWA.xyz confirmed a quiet but significant milestone in the race to tokenize real‑world assets.

The XRP Ledger now holds approximately $1.756 billion in on‑chain real‑world asset value, excluding stablecoins. Solana, the high‑throughput retail darling, trails at $1.682 billion.

The margin is narrow — roughly $74 million. But the trajectory is not.

Over the past 30 days, XRPL’s represented asset value surged 276.75%. Solana’s distributed asset value grew 43.34%. Ethereum posted 16.58%; Polygon, 22.48%.

On the surface, this looks like a classic “flippening.” A slower, institution‑focused network overtaking a faster, retail‑centric one in a metric that matters to the next wave of crypto adoption.

Yet the holder counts tell a different story — and it is the story that matters.

XRPL achieves its $1.76 billion RWA footprint with only 22 real‑world asset holders. Its 30‑day transfer volume is approximately $10.11 million, down 91% over the same period.

Solana, by contrast, reports 285,007 RWA holders — up 115% in 30 days — and $2.18 billion in transfer volume, up 36.92%.

This is not a competition Solana is losing. It is a competition the two networks are winning in fundamentally different ways.

Represented vs. Distributed: Two Competing Models of Tokenization

The RWA.xyz taxonomy divides tokenized assets into two categories that have become essential vocabulary for understanding the institutional shift.

Distributed assets are built to move. They are freely transferable peer‑to‑peer, can be held in any self‑custodial wallet, and generate the high transaction counts and active address metrics that crypto traders recognize as “adoption.”

Represented assets are recorded on‑chain but are not freely transferable outside the issuer’s participant set. The blockchain functions as a shared ledger for reconciliation, compliance, and lifecycle management — not as a distribution channel to anonymous retail wallets.

XRPL’s RWA explosion is almost entirely in the represented category. Solana’s is overwhelmingly distributed.

This explains how XRPL can lead in notional value while remaining, by crypto‑native activity standards, nearly dormant. It is not a bug; it is the architectural expression of an institutional onboarding sequence.

Institutions begin by recording assets on a ledger. They establish control, verify compliance, and prove the operating model. Only later do they expand distribution and secondary transfer.

XRPL has spent the past 18 months building the primitives for that sequence.

Why Institutions Choose XRPL: Permissioned Domains and Controlled Compliance

The XRP Ledger’s institutional feature set is not an afterthought. It is a deliberate, protocol‑level architecture designed to mirror the operational boundaries of traditional finance.

PermissionedDomains enable issuers to restrict participation to credential‑gated wallets. This transforms “permissioning” from a business‑process promise into an on‑chain, verifiable constraint.

PermissionedDEX, though not yet in active use, is designed to create a trading environment restricted to approved participants — a regulated marketplace, not a public order book.

MPTokensV1 adds token primitives that address common issuance requirements: dividend distribution, voting rights, and transfer controls that issuers expect from capital markets infrastructure.

These are not features that generate retail excitement. They are features that generate institutional trust.

The recent issuer activity confirms the pattern.

On February 11, 2026, Aviva Investors — the $345 billion asset management arm of the UK’s largest insurer — announced a partnership with Ripple to tokenize traditional fund structures on the XRP Ledger. Aviva explicitly cited XRPL’s compliance tooling, near‑instant settlement, and native liquidity as decisive factors.

One week earlier, Ctrl Alt and Billiton Diamond launched a $280 million diamond tokenization initiative in the UAE, backed by Ripple infrastructure. Physical commodities, held in the Emirates, represented on the XRPL.

Neither project requires 285,000 holders. Both require trust, control, and a clear regulatory perimeter.

‘XRP Is Our North Star’: Garlinghouse Doubles Down on Institutional Strategy

On the same day the RWA.xyz data circulated, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse took the stage — virtually, via X Spaces — at XRP Community Day.

His message was unambiguous.

“XRP is the North Star for Ripple,” Garlinghouse said. “It drives our strategy across payments, lending, and custody. Ripple Payments, Ripple Prime, Ripple Treasury — all of it is built to expand XRP utility, trust, and liquidity”.

He positioned Ripple not as a “crypto‑first” firm, but as a financial infrastructure platform. The goal, he said, is to become “the most regulated and compliant company in the sector.”

This framing is critical. Ripple is not asking institutions to adopt crypto. It is asking institutions to adopt XRPL as the settlement layer for their existing asset classes. The difference is not semantic; it is structural.

Garlinghouse also referenced the Aviva partnership directly, describing it as validation of Ripple’s institutional thesis. “One of the world’s largest asset managers is tokenizing on the XRP Ledger,” he said. “This is not a pilot. This is production.”

CLARITY Act Progress: 75% Chance of Signing by April

Garlinghouse also addressed the legislative front, offering a specific timeline for the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.

“I think there is a 75% chance that by the end of April, it will be very close to getting signed,” he said.

His confidence followed a White House meeting that Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty described as “productive,” with bipartisan support still intact and a compromise “likely”.

White House advisor Patrick Witt, who attended the meeting, posted on X: “We are going to get this done.”

For XRP, CLARITY passage would remove the last vestiges of regulatory uncertainty that have shadowed the asset since the SEC lawsuit. For the broader industry, it would establish the market structure framework that institutional capital has demanded since 2021.

Garlinghouse’s 75% estimate is not a prediction; it is a signal to institutional counterparties that the compliance window is about to open.

From $50 Billion Valuation to Trillion‑Dollar Ambitions

Garlinghouse’s XRP Community Day remarks arrived alongside a separate data point that reframes Ripple’s long‑term positioning.

CB Insights ranked Ripple Labs ninth globally among top IPO candidates, with a valuation exceeding $50 billion. The list placed Ripple alongside SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, and ByteDance — ahead of SHEIN and just behind Databricks.

The valuation reflects enterprise equity, not XRP market capitalization. But the distinction is increasingly academic. Ripple holds over 40 billion** **XRP in escrow; the company’s financial health and the token’s liquidity are structurally entangled.

Garlinghouse declined to comment on IPO timing, and Ripple President Monica Long has repeatedly stated that the company has no near‑term listing plan. Acquisitions, not public offerings, are the current focus.

Yet Garlinghouse did offer a broader prediction.

“I expect a trillion‑dollar crypto company to emerge,” he said. “There could be more than one.”

The implication is not subtle. Ripple, with its $50 billion private valuation, institutional revenue streams, and expanding tokenization footprint, intends to be among them.

What XRPL’s RWA Flip Means for Solana and the Tokenization Race

Solana is not threatened by XRPL’s value flip. The two networks are not competing for the same customers.

Solana has won the participation battle. Its 285,000 RWA holders, $2.18 billion in transfer volume, and 115% holder growth demonstrate that distributed tokenization can achieve retail scale and liquidity. The ecosystem of DeFi protocols, stablecoins, and NFT markets that has grown around Solana is a genuine achievement.

XRPL has won the concentration battle. Its 22 holders represent a handful of large, credible issuers who have chosen the network for its compliance tooling and institutional pedigree. Aviva and Billiton are not retail experiments; they are production deployments.

The more interesting question is whether the gap between represented and distributed assets will narrow — and from which direction.

If PermissionedDEX enters active use and institutions begin trading tokenized assets among themselves on XRPL, transfer volume and holder counts will rise, even if participation remains gated.

If Solana attracts a major institutional issuer willing to deploy represented assets within controlled structures, its average ticket size will increase.

Neither outcome is mutually exclusive. The tokenization market is large enough to accommodate both models.

The Road Ahead: From Represented Assets to Active Markets

Nigel Khakoo, Ripple’s Vice President of Trading and Markets, framed the current phase as the bridge between experimentation and scale.

“Tokenization is now moving from experimentation to large‑scale production,” Khakoo said following the Aviva announcement. “Institutions like Aviva Investors are now focused on how to deploy regulated financial assets at scale”.

That deployment, however, requires more than issuance. It requires markets.

XRPL’s next milestone is the activation of its permissioned trading infrastructure. PermissionedDEX, once live, will allow approved participants to trade tokenized assets in a compliant, controlled environment. Lending protocols can follow, enabling assets to be used as collateral.

When that happens, the distinction between represented and distributed value begins to blur. Assets that were once static ledger entries become active financial instruments.

The 22 holders become 200. The $10 million transfer volume becomes $1 billion. And the narrative shifts from “XRPL leads in RWA value” to “XRPL leads in institutional DeFi.”

Conclusion: The Quiet Flip That Speaks Loudly

The XRP Ledger now holds more tokenized real‑world asset value than Solana. It achieved this lead with 0.008% of Solana’s holder base and 0.005% of its transfer volume.

This is not a paradox. It is a design choice.

XRPL is not trying to win the race for wallets, transactions, or DEX volume. It is trying to win the race for institutional trust. The features that matter to that constituency — PermissionedDomains, MPTokens, controlled settlement — are invisible to retail traders and irrelevant to most DeFi applications.

But they are essential to Aviva Investors, Billiton Diamond, and the next generation of regulated asset managers preparing to move billions of dollars of traditional assets on‑chain.

Brad Garlinghouse calls** **XRP the “North Star.” The RWA.xyz data suggests that institutions are beginning to navigate by it.

The flip is narrow, the holder count is tiny, and the transfer volume is dormant. None of that will last if the permissioned markets stack activates as designed.

For now, the signal is clear: the institutional tokenization playbook is being written on the XRP Ledger. Solana is writing a different book, for a different audience.

Both will be read. But the quiet flip speaks louder than the noisy volume.