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Ripple USD (RLUSD) now tops the chart for short-term volume growth on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), outpacing Ethena's USDe. RWA Foundation, citing Token Terminal data, shows RLUSD's DEX trading volume jumped by $127.4 million over the past seven days.

USDe, the synthetic dollar issued by Ethena, has a bigger market cap of $4.97 billion at press time. Its DEX volume grew by $71.4 million, giving RLUSD a $56 million lead for the week.

Other major DeFi stablecoins, Usual's USD0 and Aave's GHO among them, stayed below $20 million.

Ethena offers roughly 5% yield through sUSDe staking. According to Ethena's documentation, the main risk of its delta-neutral model, which relies on short positions in perpetual futures, is prolonged negative funding rates.

USDe supply peaked above $14 billion in 2025. Ethena's fee switch and ENA buybacks are set to start only once the 14-day average USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion.

What drove RLUSD's growth

RLUSD is issued under the supervision of the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and backed 100% by cash and short-term U.S. Treasuries, with monthly attestations of its reserves.

BNY acts as the custodian of RLUSD reserves.

In late October, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) gave final approval to Ripple National Trust Bank. The bank will manage RLUSD reserves under federal oversight.

Besides it, RLUSD is available in Spark's Stablecoin FX pool on Uniswap v4, which lets corporate players make multi-million-dollar swaps.

According to RWA Foundation, about 92% of RLUSD turnover on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) runs through direct pairs with XRP.

Ripple also expanded its partnership with Robinhood. According to the companies, Bitstamp will use RLUSD on the XRP Ledger for settlement, while Robinhood plans to offer RLUSD to its retail customers by the end of the year.

At the same time, Coinbase added RLUSD to Coinbase Prime, Coinbase Exchange and its retail app, with 1:1 USD conversion on the XRP Ledger, Ethereum and Base.

At press time, RLUSD's market cap stands at $2.69 billion, roughly half USDe's size. The stablecoin started 2026 at about $1.28 billion.