Ripple is backing a new institutional credit fund that will lend its RLUSD stablecoin to fintech and payments companies on the XRP Ledger, working with lending platform Clearpool and credit manager Cicada Partners. The fund will issue working-capital loans denominated in RLUSD, with Cicada sourcing borrowers, setting loan terms and monitoring credit risk, while Clearpool builds the infrastructure that creates and manages the lending pools. Ripple is joining as a limited partner on the same terms as other investors rather than backstopping any losses. Neither the size of the fund nor Ripple’s own commitment was disclosed. The plan, reported by CoinDesk on August 21, pushes the XRP Ledger toward private credit, a market that has drawn banks and asset managers looking for onchain yield.
RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, a token designed to hold a steady value of one U.S. dollar so it can move money without the price swings of assets like bitcoin.
Key takeaways
- Ripple, Clearpool and Cicada Partners are building an institutional credit fund that lends RLUSD to fintech, payments and crypto service firms for working capital on the XRP Ledger.
- The product depends on two XRP Ledger upgrades still in governance voting: the XLS-66 lending protocol and XLS-65 single-asset vaults. Nothing is live on the main network yet.
- Cicada says it has underwritten more than $860 million of credit; Clearpool says it has facilitated more than $930 million of institutional loans since 2021.
- Borrowers receive and repay RLUSD, creating demand for the stablecoin. XRP itself is used only for transaction fees and minimum account balances.
Published: August 21, 2026, 09:15 UTC
What Ripple, Clearpool and Cicada are building
The fund routes real lending activity onto the XRP Ledger rather than a general-purpose blockchain like Ethereum. Cicada Partners acts as both the fund’s general partner and the credit-pool manager, deciding who borrows and on what terms. Clearpool supplies the software that spins up and administers the pools of capital. Ripple contributes money as one investor among several.
The target borrowers are fintech companies, payments businesses and crypto service providers that need short-term working capital. According to the companies, returns come from interest that borrowers pay, not from liquidity mining, arbitrage or leveraged DeFi trades. That framing matters because it positions the fund as business lending rather than another yield product aimed at crypto traders.
Private credit is lending to companies outside the public bond and bank markets, usually through a fund that pools investor money and charges interest. Cicada says it has underwritten more than $860 million of such credit, while Clearpool reports more than $930 million in institutional loans arranged since 2021.
Why the timing matters
The announcement lands during XRP’s strongest week in months. The token rose almost 20% in 24 hours to around $1.30 and is up roughly 30% over seven days, part of a broad rally that lifted major cryptocurrencies after the U.S. Treasury doubled its bond buybacks on Wednesday. The credit fund is a business story rather than a market driver, but it reinforces a theme Ripple has pushed all year: making the XRP Ledger useful to institutions through stablecoins and tokenized assets.
It also deepens the split between XRP and RLUSD. Demand generated by the fund flows to RLUSD, since loans are issued and repaid in the stablecoin. XRP captures value only indirectly, through the fees and reserve balances every XRP Ledger account must hold. Ripple opened RLUSD minting to institutions earlier this year, and this fund gives the token a concrete lending use case.
The catch: the tech is not live yet
None of this runs on the XRP Ledger’s main network today. Clearpool is testing the integration on a development network, and the two ledger features the fund relies on are still moving through the network’s amendment voting process, in which validators approve protocol changes before they go live. Ripple first signalled this push when it said it wanted institutions to borrow against tokenized assets on XRPL in June.
The first, XLS-66, is a lending protocol that issues and repays loans directly on the ledger. The second, XLS-65, creates single-asset vaults that pool money from multiple lenders under one manager, which here is Cicada. A single-asset vault is an onchain account that holds one type of token, such as RLUSD, and lets a designated manager deploy it on behalf of depositors. Both features are built natively into the XRP Ledger rather than as separate smart contracts, which Ripple argues reduces the attack surface that has drained other DeFi lending platforms. The same amendment process recently revived two XRP Ledger features that had been pulled over bugs. Until validators approve both amendments, the fund remains a plan on a test network.
Frequently asked questions
What is RLUSD?
RLUSD is Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, launched to settle payments and hold value at one U.S. dollar. In this fund it is the currency borrowers receive and repay, which drives demand for the token as lending activity grows on the XRP Ledger.
Is Ripple guaranteeing the loans?
No. Ripple joins the fund as a limited partner investing on the same terms as other institutions. Cicada Partners underwrites and manages credit risk, and Ripple does not backstop losses if borrowers default.
When will the lending platform go live?
No date has been set. The product needs two XRP Ledger upgrades, XLS-66 and XLS-65, to pass the network’s validator voting process first. Clearpool is currently testing the system on a development network.
