Ripple has opened the XRP Ledger to autonomous AI-agent payments, but the chain’s tokenomics mean XRP holders may see little of the upside even if the effort succeeds. A record burn rate would still take more than 154 years to remove 1% of supply.
Ripple wants the XRP Ledger to become the rails for AI agents that pay for things on their own, yet the way the network is built leaves little room for XRP holders to benefit if that vision arrives.
Ripple opens XRPL to machine payments
On June 10, Ripple shipped the XRP Ledger AI Starter Kit, the infrastructure that lets autonomous software agents pay for services and fees in XRP and in Ripple’s dollar-backed stablecoin. The agents transact using x402, an open standard for machine-to-machine payments.
The pitch sounds novel, but it echoes what other leading blockchains have been building to capture a share of the agent economy, if that economy ever materializes.
A late entry into a running race
XRPL is one of several chains x402 supports, alongside Solana and Ethereum. The protocol launched in May 2025, and by March 2026 it had handled roughly 35 million transactions on Solana, with stablecoins the most dominant medium of exchange. XRPL, therefore, arrives long after early capital settled elsewhere.
That does not make it irrelevant, because Ripple is aiming at a different audience. Its pitch to financial institutions rests on fast transaction finality, predictable low fees, and built-in compliance tools, and it hopes those users treat XRPL as the place to test agent-driven payments.
Why holders may barely feel it
Even if the plan works, the network’s tokenomics guarantee no direct path for holders to capture the upside. Every XRP transaction burns a tiny fee that is destroyed rather than paid to anyone.
Since 2012, about 14.3 million XRP have been burned, or 0.02% of the float. April 2026 brought a record 71.5 million monthly transactions, translating to roughly 4 million XRP burned in a year. At that pace, removing even 1% of outstanding supply would take more than 154 years. Value can route through the chain without ever being captured in XRP itself, which makes it hard for any new XRPL capability to reshape the coin’s investment case.
Source: Motley Fool via The Globe and Mail
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
