XRP is the native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger, a public blockchain built for moving value quickly and cheaply. Its main job is payments and settlement. It is often used as a bridge currency, a neutral asset two parties can pass through to swap one currency for another without each holding the other directly. The ledger can also represent other units of value, such as tokens issued by a business.
The XRP Ledger does not use the mining model behind Bitcoin or the staking model behind many newer chains. It runs on its own consensus protocol. Rather than competing to solve puzzles, a network of independent validators agrees on the order and validity of transactions and settles them every three to five seconds. Each participant trusts a list of validators it considers reliable, and the network reaches agreement when enough of those trusted validators concur. The design trades the open competition of proof of work for speed and low transaction cost.
Development began in 2011, led by engineers David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto. The XRP Ledger launched in June 2012. Shortly after, the founders set up a company called OpenCoin in September 2012, which changed its name to Ripple Labs in September 2013. The company has remained closely tied to XRP and has built payment and settlement products around the ledger, though the network itself runs across many independent validators.
Supply works differently from coins that are mined into existence over time. All 100 billion XRP were created at inception rather than issued gradually. The founders gave a large share, 80 billion XRP, to Ripple Labs. Because the full supply already exists, no new XRP is minted by ordinary network activity, and a small amount of XRP is destroyed as a fee on every transaction, which slowly reduces the total over the long run.
In practice, XRP sits in the part of crypto focused on payments and cross-border transfers rather than smart contracts or decentralized apps. Its pitch has stayed consistent since launch. Settle transactions in seconds at very low cost, and act as a common asset that links different currencies and systems. That focus, along with the long association with Ripple, has kept it among the more recognized names in the market and a frequent reference point in debates over how crypto fits into existing finance.