Ripple’s $1.3B RLUSD Goes Multichain With Expansion to Optimism, Base, and More
Ripple just kicked off what could be one of the most consequential multichain stablecoin rollouts of the year.
The payments-blockchain outfit is piloting its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin RLUSD on a set of Ethereum Layer-2 networks, including Optimism, Coinbase’s Base, Kraken’s Ink and Uniswap’s Unichain: in a strategic push to embed the token deeper into the wider DeFi ecosystem.
At the heart of the rollout is a partnership with Wormhole, whose Native Token Transfers (NTT) standard lets RLUSD move natively across chains without the usual “wrapped” or synthetic detours that fragment liquidity and complicate compliance.
That technical choice isn’t just convenient: it’s a bid to marry regulatory rigor with real-world usability, liquidity, and speed, traits often at odds in crypto.
This isn’t Ripple’s first multichain play, the stablecoin already lives on Ethereum and the XRP Ledger, but bringing RLUSD onto popular Layer-2s represents a notable widening of its footprint ahead of a broader rollout expected in 2026, pending regulatory sign-offs from the New York Department of Financial Services.
Why it matters:
Stablecoins have quickly gone from crypto plumbing to global financial infrastructure, and RLUSD, now boasting a roughly $1.3B market cap, is positioning itself as a fully regulated alternative to giants like USDC and USDT. A recent pilot with Mastercard and WebBank to settle credit-card payments using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger further underscores Ripple’s intention to blur the line between crypto rails and traditional finance.
On X.com, Ripple’s official account has been broadcasting the expansion, emphasizing Wormhole’s NTT standard and the stablecoin’s regulatory pedigree, while community chatter frames the news as both a DeFi milestone and a broader validation of compliant crypto infrastructure. X (formerly Twitter)+1
RLUSD is expanding to Layer 2s using @wormhole’s NTT standard for native, secure transfers and will become the first U.S.-based, trust-regulated stablecoin on @Optimism, @Base, @Inkonchain and @Unichain: https://t.co/ju9KyoOIBa
— Ripple (@Ripple) December 15, 2025
This will enhance utility for XRP and RLUSD by…
If RLUSD’s rollout succeeds, it could reshape how regulated stablecoins operate across the explosive Layer-2 landscape opening new cross-chain liquidity corridors and giving institutions a compliant onchain dollar that spans multiple ecosystems.
