Ripple is moving deeper into onchain credit through a new partnership with Clearpool and Cicada Partners, an initiative announced on August 20, 2026 that targets lending backed by real business activity rather than speculative DeFi strategies.

— Cicada Partners (@cicadacredit) August 20, 2026

The program combines three components: Clearpool's lending infrastructure, Cicada's credit underwriting, and an investment by Ripple in a credit fund built on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). Together, the firms cover technology, credit process and capital: Clearpool supplies the lending infrastructure, Cicada the underwriting, and Ripple the funding through its limited partner commitment.

The partnership lands amid a broader institutional shift toward public blockchains — asset managers such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton already operate tokenized funds onchain — and it extends Ripple's own recent expansion beyond payments into areas such as custody and stablecoins.

A New Credit Layer for XRPL

Clearpool will build the lending structure using XRPL's native lending protocol (XLS-66) together with Single Asset Vaults (XLS-65). The architecture is designed as semi-autonomous, independent credit markets in which the conditions of lending are clearly set. XRPL has historically been used mainly for payments and settlement, so a native lending standard represents a significant extension of the ledger's institutional toolkit.

Since 2021, Clearpool has arranged over $930 million in institutional loans and has built up extensive experience operating on XRPL, positioning it as a trusted lender to expand this model to the network.

Cicada Partners will be in charge of the credit side of the deal. The firm has underwritten more than $860 million and will source borrowers, develop and write loan terms, and oversee credit performance once the financing has been deployed.

Ripple Takes an Investor Role

On the investor side, Ripple will participate as a limited partner in the credit fund. The company will operate on equal terms with the other investors rather than serving as a place where losses are thrown upon.

The capital is anticipated to be channeled toward companies in the fintech sector, payment providers, and crypto service businesses that rely on stablecoins to transform their working capital requirements.

RLUSD, the stablecoin Ripple launched in December 2024 with approval from the New York State Department of Financial Services, will serve as the credit asset for the program, giving the initiative a direct link to Ripple's stablecoin ecosystem. Borrowers can obtain liquidity in stablecoins, while lenders remain active participants in XRPL infrastructure.

Real-World Yield Moves into Crypto

The partners' plan is aimed at one of the biggest shortcomings in today's DeFi market, where yield is driven primarily by trading-related mechanisms such as arbitrage, looping, basis trading and points, rather than by engagement with operating businesses. Cicada believes these market mechanisms generate approximately 98% of the yield in DeFi.

Onchain private credit itself is not new: protocols such as Maple Finance, Centrifuge and Goldfinch have arranged institutional loans for years, and Maple's 2022 defaults on undercollateralized loans to crypto-sector borrowers highlighted how central underwriting quality is to the model. The traditional market the partners are targeting is far larger, with industry estimates placing global private debt assets above $1.5 trillion.

The new model instead concentrates on the return from loans to companies with a realistic need for financing. That separation could make it simpler to encourage institutional involvement, since lenders can evaluate borrowers, set the terms of the loan and track repayment, rather than blindly following the volatile incentives of the crypto market.

XRPL also provides a number of controls for institutional users. Permitted Domains, Credentials and Clawback can facilitate participant verification and asset controls, while the proposed lending architecture can handle loans, repayments and liquidity accounting at the ledger level.

Devnet Testing Underway, Mainnet Launch Pending

Clearpool is still working to implement and test the integration on XRPL Devnet. Milestones of this process are expected to be demonstrated and explained technically, including the creation of the credit pool, borrowing and repayment.

However, the Lending Protocol and Single Asset Vault changes must still pass the community voting process and have not yet been deployed on the XRPL Mainnet. On XRPL, protocol changes of this kind require sustained support from a supermajority of validators before they activate. As a result, the proposed institutional credit system has not started at this time, and the practical signals to watch are validator approval of XLS-65 and XLS-66, completion of the Devnet milestones, and the first loans originated on Mainnet.