coindesk.com
Ripple, the payments-focused blockchain firm closely related to the XRP Ledger (XRP), is taking its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin RLUSD$0.9997 to Ethereum layer-2 (L2) blockchains including Optimism, Coinbase's Base, Kraken's Ink and Uniswap's Unichain in a push to embed the $1.3 billion token deeper into the multichain ecosystem.
The company, announcing the move Monday, said it is starting with a test phase ahead of a wider rollout expected next year, pending regulatory approval by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
The pilot integrates Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) standard, which allows RLUSD to move natively across chains without wrapping or synthetic assets. This helps maintain liquidity and regulatory control while supporting a range of decentralized finance (DeFi) use cases across networks optimized for speed and lower costs.
Stablecoins are rapidly growing as a key piece of digital-finance plumbing connecting traditional finance and the crypto economy. They are a $300 billion class of cryptocurrencies, with prices pegged to fiat money like the U.S. dollar.
Originally available on Ethereum and the XRP Ledger networks, RLUSD is issued under a NYDFS Trust Charter. Ripple obtained initial approval for a federal trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) last week, which would make RLUSD the first stablecoin under both state and federal regulatory oversight.
"Stablecoins are the gateway to DeFi and institutional adoption, Jack McDonald, senior vice president of stablecoin at Ripple, said in a statement. "By launching RLUSD — the first U.S. Trust Regulated stablecoin on these L2 networks — we are not just expanding utility; we are setting the definitive standard where compliance and onchain efficiency converge."
The rollout also supports a wrapped version of the XRP token (wXRP), making it easier for holders to use XRP alongside RLUSD for swaps, lending and payments across supported chains, the statement said. For example, a retail crypto user could soon convert wXRP to RLUSD within a DeFi app on Optimism or Base without leaving the chain.