XRPL faces scam influx amid institutional interest boom
Institutional interest in the XRP Ledger (XRPL) continues to grow, as does the number of scams exploiting the ecosystem.
On June 4, Panos Mekras, co-founder of Anodos Finance, a leading DeFi platform built on XRPL, raised concerns over the proliferation of fraudulent projects piggybacking on the blockchain network’s growing visibility.
In the X post, Mekras warned the community about the influx of low-effort projects aiming to deceive retail participants. He emphasized that many of these projects launch tokens and host presales without any functional product or viable roadmap.
Mekras pointed out that these XRPL-based ventures offer little more than flashy websites, vague promises, and aggressive marketing tactics.
He added that some of these projects even present roadmaps that delay delivery of simple products for over a year or list centralized exchange (CEX) listings and influencer campaigns as key milestones.
Mekras said:
“Sceptical of any project launching a token and doing presales, especially if they don’t have a working product or anything to prove.”
Ripple CTO David Schwartz also addressed the issue, affirming that open ecosystems are vulnerable to bad actors due to the ease of launching low-effort scams.
He stated:
“Mathematically, this almost has to be true of almost any open ecosystem. It’s just so much easier to create a scam than something real.”
However, Mekras pointed out that XRPL currently lags behind other rivals in quality development.
For context, he noted that rival platforms like Avalanche host dozens of high-quality dApps and hold billions in total value locked (TVL), while XRPL is struggling with a lack of solid, usable projects.
He said:
“We lack quality products and builders in this ecosystem, so we need to change this.”
Ripple is building a financial system
Despite these risks, Schwartz outlined a long-term vision for XRPL as a foundational layer for global finance.
He stated:
“You could consider the XRPL together with other things Ripple has built to be a financial system. I hope over the next few years it can provide a significant fraction of the financial services that people need every day from payments to investments to loans.”
He explained that XRP will be central to this ecosystem for payments, liquidity, trading, and settlement.
According to Schwartz:
“XRP has a privileged place on XRPL. It’s the only asset that any account can receive. It’s the only asset without a counterparty. Pathfinding checks for XRP liquidity first. Autobridging makes offers to and from XRP more likely to be taken. It’s the only asset you can pay transaction fees with.”
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