TL;DR:
Panos Mekras, an XRP Ledger developer, has spotlighted what he called the ecosystem’s biggest RLUSD liquidity incentive, praising an initiative from First Ledger that rewards Ripple USD holders and aims to deepen activity on the XRPL DEX. The early numbers were attention grabbing: the report said First Digital logged up to $500,000 in XRP liquidity in under 24 hours as users chased a 12.8% APR on the XRP/RLUSD pool. Mekras also pushed Ripple Labs to support DeFi startups more aggressively. Early traction shows incentives can mobilize liquidity fast, before broader DeFi adoption fully matures.
This is a great incentive program by @First_Ledger. Almost $500K of liquidity added in a few days. By the way, we had the same idea last year and proposed this to Ripple (along with some other great ideas) to bootstrap the XRP/RLUSD liquidity on the DEX and increase volumes and… https://t.co/oaU6h9780M
— Panos
(@panosmek) March 3, 2026
Mekras framed the push as classic automated market maker mechanics, comparing today’s pools to the earliest AMM playbooks. Users lock funds, earn rewards, and those funds power swaps and other DeFi actions, a loop popularized by Uniswap. Yet he said the intriguing part is not the concept, but the governance response: the same incentive idea was proposed to Ripple in 2025, along with other ideas, to bootstrap XRP/RLUSD liquidity on the DEX and lift volumes, but it was largely disregarded. He said First Ledger’s rollout proves the model can work, despite earlier internal skepticism.
As debate spread, Mekras clarified that Ripple maintains a department focused on the XRP Ledger, a detail he shared after the claim started generating interest. He argued that a dedicated 1 billion XRP allocation for the community and builders could materially change the trajectory if deployed through targeted grants, coordinated incentives, and hands-on support for builders. The implication is that liquidity is not only a market metric, but also a coordination tool that can compress the time it takes for new DeFi primitives to reach usable scale faster. He expects a significant change ahead.
Even with the $500,000 burst, the report stressed XRPL remains far behind in DeFi adoption. Ethereum’s total value locked was pegged above $52.8 billion, compared with less than $47 million on XRPL, and the ledger was described as underperforming on fee generation and active addresses. In that context, developer grants become a first-step market share strategy, aligning capital with builders and giving liquidity programs a runway longer than short-term yield, while nudging the ecosystem toward repeatable usage. Mekras said Ripple-backed grants could be the starting move to reclaim share, while addressing lagging DeFi metrics.
