Ripple, the leader in enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions, and Archax, the UK’s first Financial Conduct Authority regulated digital asset exchange, broker and custodian, today announced an extension to their existing collaboration which is expected to bring hundreds of millions of dollars of tokenized real world assets (RWAs) onto the XRP Ledger (XRPL) over the coming year and establish the XRPL as one of the leading blockchains for RWA tokenization.

Archax works with leading financial institutions to enable them to tokenize their financial RWAs. As a result of this collaboration, financial institutions will be able to select the XRPL to tokenise their RWAs, creating opportunities for numerous downstream use cases for these assets.

The agreement represents an evolution of the relationship between Ripple and Archax which was established in 2022 when Archax collaborated with Metaco to offer digital asset custody services to its clients. Metaco was acquired by Ripple in mid-2023.

The XRPL is an open-source public decentralized Layer 1 blockchain. With built-in capabilities like tokenization, a native decentralized exchange, compliance features and more, the XRPL is built to power institutional-grade financial use cases.

"Our industry is at the start of the next major adoption stage in which blockchain technology will deliver real utility in financial markets at scale," said Markus Infanger, SVP, RippleX. "Ripple is excited to see Archax’s vision of driving the adoption of blockchain and digital assets technology amongst financial institutions come to life, while further underlining the credentials of the XRPL as one of the leading blockchains for RWA tokenization.”

Ripple and Archax share a compliance-first mindset. Both companies work proactively with regulators and policymakers around the world to bring the benefits of crypto and blockchain technology to the world’s global financial infrastructure. As the first and only FCA-regulated digital securities exchange, custodian and brokerage, Archax is uniquely positioned to provide its clients with the means to derive the benefits of DeFi through RWA tokenization, all underpinned by the strength and capabilities of the XRPL.

“We have hit the tipping point for mainstream adoption of digital assets for real world use cases,” said Graham Rodford, CEO, Archax. “There is clear real-world utility in use cases like RWA tokenization for the operational efficiency, access to liquid markets and transparency inherent to crypto, and Archax has already tokenised assets such as equities, debt instruments and money market funds. Financial institutions are now understanding this and we are excited to play our part in helping them to embrace the technology by bringing their assets onto the XRPL.”

The XRPL provides a strong foundation for RWA tokenization and institutional-grade DeFi thanks to its proven reliability, efficiency, and its roadmap of comprehensive features such as an Automated Market Maker (AMM) currently live on the XRPL as well as the upcoming Decentralized Identifier (DID), Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPT) capability, a Lending Protocol, and Oracles. Over the past decade, the XRPL has been the home of over 1,000 projects, processing over 2.8 billion transactions without failure or security breach since 2012 and supporting over 5 million active wallets with a network of over 120 validators.