Swift’s resolution to embed a blockchain-based, shared ledger into its core infrastructure has triggered a brand new spherical of soul-searching round Ripple’s technique and the XRP Ledger’s utility. Introduced at Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt on September 29, Swift framed the transfer as a “pivotal step” towards on the spot, always-on cross-border settlement at international scale—positioning its new ledger as an extension of two years of tokenization trials reasonably than a wholesale system substitute.
“Make XRP Nice Once more”
Towards that backdrop, CoreNest Capital GP Bob Ras urged Ripple to rethink its roadmap. “So Ripple has been making an attempt to interchange SWIFT for years. SWIFT simply added blockchain as an alternative. The plot twist writes itself. What’s the following transfer? Possibly it’s the best time to pivot?” he wrote on X.
In a follow-up submit he sharpened his critique: “Ripple has been everywhere in the map: cross-border funds, then NFTs, then tokenization, now stablecoins. The core difficulty is XRPL itself. With out sensible contracts it’s simply not a pleasant chain for builders, which is why you don’t see a lot severe constructing taking place on it. Even the makes an attempt so as to add sensible contracts, just like the grant to Axelar, haven’t actually materialized.”
In anticipation of the anticipated pushback from the XRP military, he added: “Hate me or love me, the fact is, proper now XRP doesn’t supply actual utility past easy worth transfers from one pockets to a different. Any tokens can do this. For a venture that when aimed to flip SWIFT, that’s not sufficient. Ripple wants a pivot towards true utility if it desires to remain related. MAKE XRP GREAT AGAIN!”
Ras’s remarks landed as Chainlink publicly congratulated Swift and underscored a multi-year collaboration that features 2023 interoperability experiments utilizing Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and Swift’s messaging rails. Chainlink known as the Sibos announcement “a landmark second,” reiterating that oracles and messaging requirements can bridge banks to private and non-private chains with out ripping out current infrastructure.
XRP Vs. Chainlink And SWIFT
That framing spurred a valuation and token-economics debate. “Can somebody from the XRP military clarify how XRP is greater than TEN occasions LINK’s worth, when LINK has a REAL partnership with SWIFT, AND a transparent path to income to be shared with token holders…,” wrote Dave Weisberger, co-founder and former chairman of CoinRoutes, who later clarified that he holds each belongings however sees “delusional” worth calls.
Neighborhood replies ranged from market-cap arithmetic to claims about on-chain quantity, with critics countering that top transactional throughput doesn’t, by itself, translate into accrual of worth to a token. The change captured a persistent fault line: does institutional adoption of bank-friendly rails and oracle networks favor impartial middleware like Chainlink greater than L1 tokens whose payment-network ambitions overlap with Swift’s improve path?
Ras’s central technical declare—that XRPL’s base layer is inhospitable to builders as a result of it lacks general-purpose sensible contracts—has historic grounding however requires nuance in late-2025. Ripple has lengthy prioritized deterministic, built-in primitives for funds, a local DEX, and, extra just lately, NFTs (XLS-20), reasonably than a Turing-complete VM.
Neighborhood proposals resembling “Hooks” search so as to add light-weight, on-ledger programmability; in parallel, Ripple and ecosystem groups shipped an XRPL EVM Sidechain, dwell on mainnet since June 30, 2025, to supply Ethereum-compatible sensible contracts related to XRPL through the Axelar bridge. That sidechain—and Ripple/Axelar interoperability work—instantly addresses developer floor space, even when it does so off the L1.
Strategically, Ripple has broadened past cross-border messaging into tokenization and greenback settlement. Its US dollar-denominated stablecoin, RLUSD, was introduced in 2024 with distribution companions throughout exchanges and funds platforms; Ripple has additionally pursued institutional infrastructure, together with a 2025 settlement to accumulate prime dealer Hidden Highway.
These strikes counsel a pivot towards offering liquidity and balance-sheet utilities round tokenized belongings—an space Swift’s new ledger explicitly targets on the messaging layer. Whether or not that finally ends up complementary or aggressive for XRP’s funding case depends upon how a lot worth accrues to the ledger (or its EVM sidechain) versus to bank-operated ledgers linked by oracles and requirements.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.86.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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