The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is a distributed ledger that is powered by a network of peer-to-peer servers. Its native asset and currency is XRP, a digital asset designed as a bridge currency to move between various currencies.

While the supply of XRP is capped at a total of 100 billion XRP, the available supply of XRP actually decreases over time, as small amounts from transaction cost payments are destroyed.

The company Ripple administrates and maintains XRPL and contributes to advancing XRP by - amongst other things - including it in its service offering. The Interledger Protocol on the other hand is a network agnostic protocol, that is also supported by XRPL. Additionally, XRPL offers some integrated smart contract functionality.

XRPL's consensus mechanism is self-developed, scalable (throughput of roughly 1500 tx per second) and is based on the idea "that a little trust goes a long way". XRPL's software makes it further possible to switch cryptographic algorithms, reflecting the current state of the art.