XRP's Ledger Upgrade Nears Activation as Ripple's Legal Chief Pushes Back on Senate Fallout

XRP slips 8% after the Clarity Act fails in the Senate, while BatchV1_1 nears activation and spot XRP ETFs extend inflows to nine weeks.

A technical upgrade to the XRP Ledger is quietly gathering momentum while the token absorbs the aftershocks of a failed vote in Washington. BatchV1_1, a feature designed to let developers bundle transactions, drew 68% validator support as of September 7. Activation requires that backing to stay above 80% for a full two-week window — a threshold market watchers believe could be cleared before September is out.

The feature would allow up to eight transactions to be grouped into a single atomic unit, a change aimed at developers building on the network.

That progress on the codebase stands in contrast to the political picture. The Clarity Act went down in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday by a 49-to-50 margin, and XRP has shed roughly 8.0% since. The bill's collapse has extended regulatory uncertainty across the broader crypto market.

Alderoty: XRP's Legal Footing Is Unchanged

Ripple's Chief Legal Officer, Stuart Alderoty, moved quickly to separate the legislative defeat from the token's legal standing. Writing on X, he said Ripple and XRP sit on "settled ground," pointing to the conclusion of a five-year court battle with the SEC and a joint SEC-CFTC classification dated March 17 that treats XRP as a digital commodity. That designation holds unless a future commission decides otherwise, he argued.

Alderoty had made a similar case on the day of the failed vote itself, stressing that the Senate outcome does not reopen XRP's legal foundation or disturb a 2023 federal court ruling that went Ripple's way. The message appears aimed at investors who might read the Senate setback as a reversal in Ripple's long-running dispute with the regulator.

ETF Demand Cools After a Record Stretch

Institutional flows tell a more nuanced story. The five U.S.-listed spot XRP ETFs have now logged nine straight weeks of net inflows, bringing cumulative totals to $1.71 billion since launch. But the pace has slowed sharply: the most recent weekly haul came in at just $19 million, a fraction of the $110.49 million recorded in the week to August 28 — the strongest week of 2026 and enough to push cumulative inflows at that point to roughly $1.66 billion.

Retail investors account for 84% of the money flowing in, with the institutional capital that underpins many bullish price targets still largely absent.

The steady demand helps explain why XRP absorbed a billion-dollar escrow release from Ripple about two weeks ago without a deeper slide. Of the 1 billion tokens unlocked, 700 million flowed straight back into the contract, leaving a net 300 million XRP in Ripple's liquid wallets. The token has given up about 4.3% since that release, with roughly 31.28 billion XRP still sitting in Ripple's escrow accounts.

Price Consolidates as Network Business Expands

XRP trades at $1.32, about 6% above its 50-day average of $1.24 — a sign the near-term trend has held up despite the political headwinds — though it is down 1.1% on the week. Over 30 days the token has gained 31%, yet remains 29% lower year-to-date and 58% below its 52-week high of $3.14 set last September.

Meanwhile, Ripple's commercial operations continue to develop independently of the legislative fight. The dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD has reached $2.442 billion in volume and now accounts for 82% of stablecoin activity on the XRP Ledger. Hidden Road, acquired in October 2025 for $1.25 billion and rebranded as Ripple Prime, has tripled revenue in a year and processes more than $3 trillion in annual transaction volume for over 300 institutional clients.

On the development side, late August brought the removal of more than 10,000 lines of legacy code alongside expanded AI-assisted security testing — a cleanup that ecosystem participants say should reinforce network stability over the longer term.

For holders, the takeaway is that the ledger's fundamental trajectory — ETF inflows, a leaner codebase, and the pending batching upgrade — is running on its own track, largely detached from the horse-trading in Washington. Whether that is enough to recoup last week's losses may become clearer once BatchV1_1 goes live and the path forward for the Clarity Act comes into focus.