Ripple’s XRPL Looks to Take Bite From Rapidly Expanding AI Commerce

Key Insights

• Ethereum-based AI agent platform Virtuals.io is deploying its commerce infrastructure on Ripple XRPL.
• The protocol will tap into T54ai x402 facilitator, a payment relay that enables AI agents to pay using Ripple tokens.
• XRP is down today despite positive developments and adoption for the XRPL.

Decentralized artificial intelligence protocol Virtuals.io is set to deploy its infrastructure on Ripple XRP Ledger (XRPL). The move will enable agentic AI transactions on the XRPL network.

Virtuals is a protocol based on Ethereum that allows users to create and manage AI agents using its VIRTUALS token for liquidity and agent tokenization.

T54ai to Facilitate Virtuals Deployment on XRPL with x402

According to the announcement, Virtuals will now allow agents to transact natively on XRPL. This is possible through its use of the T54ai x402 facilitator, which is a payments relay for AI agents on the XRPL network.

The facilitator is what AI agents pay for API calls and other transactions using native tokens XRP and RLUSD.

T54ai launched the facilitator in  February, noting that it allows AI agents to use XRP and RLUSD for payments. With x402, XRPL is connected to open standards for machine-native payments, with the facilitator handling onchain verification and settlements.

Interestingly, the decision to enable agentic commerce on XRPL owes much to the network scalability. This has translated into fast transactions and low fees, as T54ai noted in its earlier announcement:

“XRPL offers fast finality, low fees, and native support for both $XRP and $RLUSD – ideal infrastructure for high-frequency agent transactions. This is real utility flowing through the ledger.”

Meanwhile, Virtuals is not the first protocol to tap into the facilitator. BlockRunAI, a payment layer for AI agents, also uses x402 to provide AI agents with access to more than 30 models via a unified gateway.

XRP Drops Despite Rising XRPL Adoption and Improvements

Virtuals deploying agentic commerce infrastructure on XRPL is only the latest in a series of developments for the network. Over the past couple of months, the network has seen new features and adoption.

Only a few weeks ago, the network was used to tokenize and custody around $280 million in diamonds by a Dubai-based company. The network also finally launched the Permissioned DEX feature, which allows regulated entities to access onchain liquidity.

It has also seen increased activity with active addresses hitting a 5-week high of 46,767 on March 17 as the number of XRP holders crossed 7.7 million.

However, all of this has not fully translated into a positive price performance for the XRP token. In the last 24 hours, it has declined slightly to $1.4 along with the rest of the market. XRP has now lost 23% of its value in 2026.

Still, there are signs the token might see a turnaround in price, given that it rose to $1.6 only a few days ago. It is still up 3% in the last seven days.

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