What is the XRP Ledger?
The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is a decentralized, public blockchain designed for fast, low-cost payments and asset exchange. It has been running continuously since 2012.
Key properties
3-5 second settlement
Transactions finalize in seconds, not minutes or hours. Once a ledger closes, the transaction is irreversible.
Negligible fees
Transaction fees are typically 0.000012 XRP (fractions of a cent). Fees are burned, not paid to validators.
Built-in DEX
The ledger has a native order book for trading any issued token pair directly on-chain, without smart contracts.
Native NFTs
NFTs are first-class ledger objects (XLS-20) — minting, trading, and burning happen at the protocol level.
No mining
The XRPL uses a consensus protocol where trusted validators agree on transaction ordering. No proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.
AMM pools
Automated Market Maker pools are built into the ledger, allowing passive liquidity provision for any token pair.
Ledger structure
The XRPL produces a new ledger roughly every 3-5 seconds. Each ledger contains a set of transactions and represents the complete state of all accounts, balances, offers, escrows, and other objects at that point in time. Ledgers are sequentially numbered — you can look up any historical ledger by its index on Sonde.
XRP
XRP is the native asset of the ledger. It's used to pay transaction fees, meet account reserves, and can be traded against any issued token. XRP amounts on the ledger are stored in "drops" — 1 XRP = 1,000,000 drops. Sonde always displays amounts in XRP, not drops.