The price of XRP has halved since October 2025. At the same time, the network shows the opposite trend — daily transaction volume grew by 67% over the quarter and recently hit a 15-month high.
Price Falls, Activity Grows
The divergence between XRP’s price action and network activity is one of the most interesting anomalies in the current market. Since early October 2025, the token has dropped from $2.84 to $1.39, losing 51%. From the all-time high of $3.6 reached in July 2025, the decline has exceeded 61%.
According to XRPScan, in the fourth quarter of 2025, the average daily number of successful payments on the network remained at 1.5 million. In the first quarter of 2026, the figure rose to 2.5 million. The peak was recorded on February 5 — 2.727 million transactions in a single day. Notably, on that very day, the price of XRP fell by 19%.
Four Straight Months of Losses — First Time Since 2019
The price context is important to understand the scale of the divergence. XRP is posting its fourth consecutive losing month — something that hasn’t happened since 2019. If April also closes in the red, it will be the first five-month losing streak in nine years.
Against this backdrop, the growth in network activity looks unusual. Typically, a decline in an asset’s price is accompanied by a reduction in on-chain operations — users move funds less during periods of uncertainty. XRP shows the opposite picture: the deeper the correction, the more transactions the network records.
What Is Behind the Growth in Payments
One explanation is the structural expansion of the network’s use in the payments segment. XRP Ledger is traditionally focused on cross-border transfers and settlements between financial institutions. The increase in successful payments from 1.5 to 2.5 million per day may reflect a real rise in such operations, independent of speculative interest in the token.
This version is also supported by the dynamics within the quarters. In January 2026, the range was 1.7–2.1 million payments per day. In February, it shifted to 1.8–2.6 million. The growth is steady and does not look like a one-off spike due to news.
AMM Deposits Hit All-Time High
The growth in activity is not limited to payments. On February 23, the daily volume of deposits into automated market maker (AMM) pools reached 11,123 — an absolute record for the entire history of observations. The previous peak was 4,951 deposits, recorded on October 11, 2024. The increase is more than double.
The total number of AMM pools on the network also hit a record, reaching 26,878. Since the beginning of 2026, 2,428 new pools have been added — compared to 1,885 for the entire fourth quarter of 2025. The DeFi infrastructure of the XRP Ledger is expanding noticeably faster than in the previous quarter.
Divergence as a Signal or Coincidence
The divergence between price and network activity often precedes reversals. If network activity grows as the price falls, it may mean the asset is being used as intended — and the selling pressure is temporary, not reflecting a real drop in demand for the infrastructure.
However, another interpretation is possible. The growth in transactions during a correction may partly be explained by loss-taking and repositioning — activity that outwardly looks like organic use of the network but in substance is a result of price pressure.
To understand the nature of the growth, more detailed analysis is needed — in particular, the distribution of transactions by size and type of participants. For now, XRPScan data records the fact: the network in the first quarter of 2026 is significantly more active than the previous quarter, despite the worst price dynamics in several years.
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