Ripple says compliance controls will unlock DeFi, but XRPL liquidity is still too thin to prove it

Ripple is working to make decentralized finance more familiar to regulated institutions and is placing XRP at the center of that effort.

DeFi’s earlier growth cycles were built around open, retail-facing liquidity pools and the associated risk tolerance. Total value locked across major protocols climbed into the tens of billions of dollars and, at previous peaks, surpassed $100 billion.

Ripple’s pitch is that the next phase will be shaped less by permissionless pools and more by controlled access,…