XRP's chain, the XRP Ledger (XRPL) already is fast and cheap, and it's quite competitive with other networks on that front.
Since a slew of recent updates implemented by its issuer, Ripple, it now also has a built-in decentralized exchange (DEX) and an automated market maker (AMM) so its ecosystem assets can trade without a traditional intermediary. These features, among many others, are part of a larger strategy to make the XRPL into a vertically integrated set of services and features that institutional investors and financial institutions can use to manage their assets. The idea is that as those players move their capital to the chain for management, they will need to buy and hold a lot of XRP to fund their accounts and pay for transaction fees.
The XRPL's new DEX is already starting to get some real traction, which suggests that the features Ripple has been building are successful in terms of generating economic activity. On Feb. 27, it registered more than $9 million in trading activity. That might not sound like much. But a year ago, it was practically dormant, with just $33,759 in activity on the same day, and it didn't have many of the capabilities that it has today -- and it will be getting even more soon, including the ability to perform confidential transactions while remaining in regulatory compliance.
With continued development of more features to incentivize capital to get to work on the network, the odds are thus pretty good that XRP will be in better shape in five years because it has a strategy that appears to be working.
