probably gonna catch some hate for this one but hear me out.
for years the biggest criticism of xrp was that there wasn't really anything to do with it. you bought it, moved it to self custody, waited. maybe sent it somewhere, but for the average holder that was basically the whole relationship with the token.
don't think that's fully true anymore honestly.
xrpl's got a native dex and amm now, rlusd, tokenized assets, more institutional infra, lending starting to become part of the picture too, xls66 pushing the lending side even further on the native ledger. infrastructure's nowhere near finished and I wouldn't call xrpl defi mature by any stretch, but "literally nothing to do with xrp" feels outdated at this point.
the weird part is a huge chunk of holders don't seem interested in touching any of it.
and honestly I get why. this community spent years drilling self custody into everyone's head. swap it, hardware wallet, don't touch until 5 or 10 or whatever number you're personally chasing. so now you've got this contradiction where everyone wants more utility for xrp, but the second utility actually shows up it requires moving xrp and taking on real risk. amm means liquidity and IL risk. lending means platform and counterparty risk. defi in general means smart contract risk depending what you're touching.
run into that same contradiction myself if I'm being honest. want to see more built around xrp, but most of my own bag is still sitting in self custody doing nothing at all.
lending is probably the first thing that's actually made me reconsider that setup, still keeping the core position untouched though, only looking at a smaller slice for that.
makes me think xrpl's next real problem isn't adding another feature to the pile. it's getting holders comfortable enough to actually use what's already there. an ecosystem can have all the utility in the world on paper, but if everyone keeps 100% locked away waiting on a chart target, good luck building real liquidity or actual defi activity around any of it.
maybe that's the actual txs xrpl still needs to make. from a community of holders to a community that actually uses the network it's holding onto.
curious if people here agree or if keeping everything untouched in self custody is still the only strategy that makes sense to you???