- Cicada, Clearpool, and Ripple have announced plans to deploy institutional lending directly on the XRP Ledger.
- It combines the partners’ unique expertise in credit, underwriting, liquidity provision, and settlement solutions.
Ripple, Cicada Credit, and Clearpool Finance have jointly announced a partnership to deploy institutional lending directly on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). It brings together Cicada’s credit and borrower pipeline, Clearpool’s financial protocol, and Ripple’s deep liquidity and highly efficient settlement rails.
Ripple, Cicada, and Clearpool: A Quick Look at the Partners
Ripple started as a provider of cross-border payments powered by the Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin and XRP. Over time, it has expanded to include custody, prime brokerage, treasury, and tokenization solutions, eventually packaging them into a unified platform through strategic acquisitions and expansion.
Meanwhile, Cicada Credit, also known as Cicada Partners, is an on-chain credit risk management and underwriting firm. It operates across multiple blockchain ecosystems, including XRPL, Ethereum (ETH), EVM chains, Sonic (S), and Plume (PLUME).
Clearpool Finance, on the other hand, is part of Clearpool Group, which specializes in decentralized capital markets infrastructure. It offers institutions direct, on-chain access to uncollateralized credit.
What the Partnership Unlocks
Institutions often grapple with capital friction, high operational overhead, and compliance barriers when delving into decentralized finance (DeFi). These factors have typically made most reluctant to participate in on-chain finance, despite growing interest in the field.
As a result, Cicada noted that 98% of DeFi yield today mostly comes from market mechanisms, including looping, arbitrage, basis trades, points, and liquidity mining. It argued that the model keeps capital mainly circular rather than funding a real institution that could later grow and contribute to real-world economic activity. Clearpool, Cicada, and Ripple bring distinct capabilities to address the underlying issue.
Clearpool plans to integrate its institutional credit protocol directly onto XRPL. It seeks to leverage the potential mainnet launch of XRP Ledger’s Single Asset Vaults via XLS-65 and native Lending Protocol via XLS-66 to provide capital markets with infrastructure to manage dynamic liquidity pools and automated yield distribution.
Cicada contributes to the partnership with its credit assessment suite, offering off-chain underwriting, borrower pipeline origination, and credit monitoring. It acts both as the fund manager and load broker within the proposed architecture.
Ripple enters the picture on an equal footing with its partners, reinforcing the triad with deep liquidity reserves, an expansive institutional network, and regulatory-compliant rails. Beyond these, it provides the settlement layer for transactions with the RLUSD pegged 1:1 to the US dollar and XRP for cross-currency deals.
Overall, their complementary roles share a unified goal: opening the institutional floodgates and real-world credit to XRPL.
