XRP Ledger Hits 10 Million Payments, But Demand Mystery Persists

The XRP Ledger has reached a milestone of 10 million x402 payments, according to RippleX engineering head J. Ayo Akinyele. This achievement comes just under three months after the first million and marks one of the network's fastest-growing use cases.

However, it is essential to note that this number represents tracked payments, not audited proof of 10 million independent customers using XRPL. The activity also combines XRP and RLUSD settlements, which does not directly show how much demand exists for XRP.

Akinyele mentioned that most payment volume still comes from AI agents buying inference and data, with services beginning to widen into financial data, risk, credit, and other agent APIs. This indicates broader activity but is not evidence of XRP buyers forming.

The XRPL AI Hub's seven-day average shows 546,333 payments settled per day. Transaction fees on the network still require XRP, even when a service settles in RLUSD, with a standard minimum of 10 drops and a fee that can rise under network load. These transaction fees are burned rather than sent to XRP holders or validators.