XDC’s DeFi ecosystem could follow Ethereum as a big beneficiary if the CLARITY Act passes through the Senate as expected.
The XDC Network’s stock has been quietly gaining ground on CoinMarketCap’s market cap rankings, and it finally capped a strong 2025 with a big leap.
With the January 1 jump, XDC Network overtook Official Trump, the memecoin token launched by US President Donald Trump, Filecoin and MYX Finance. The surge also puts it directly behind Algorand, Polygon, Arbitrum and Ondo, one of the big winners from the RWA narrative that dominated 2025 gains.
Interestingly, XDC Network has been one of the covert beneficiaries of the RWA, stablecoin and institutional adoption surges that not only led 2025 gains but also defied the October 11 market capitulation that held the market below critical levels until year-end.
As Cryptopolitan reported at the end of 2025, XDC surpassed $717 million in tokenized RWAs, according to data from Trade Fi Network. XDC has pitched itself as a bridge to launch tokenized, on-chain versions of live trade finance transactions, invoice tokenization, commodity-backed tokens, and institutional settlement rails.
The network’s offering appears to be specialized for institutional users looking to layer 1 or layer 2 subnet systems to launch sovereign and privacy-preserving subnets that run on the security of the XDC mainnet.
XDC displays massive capital concentration in high-value institutional products. One example of such deployments is the $345.3 million VERT Capital USDC-denominated private credit pools, which account for roughly 48% of XDC Network’s RWA value. The values have since gone up to $369 million, accounting for 53% according to today’s data.
Next in line, Liqi Brazil (private credit and corporate bonds) accounts for 15% while Comtech Gold secures close to $15 million in commodities on the network.
While these long-term, yield-bearing instruments were previously opaque and manual, XDC offers strategic support for TradFi players exploring a route on-chain, as seen in its XDC RWA Accelerator launched in partnership with Plug and Play, which they promoted as moving tokenization from “theoretical experiment” to “real balance sheet usage.”
Stablecoins and their issuers were one of the few categories that stayed in the green throughout 2025. Circle’s $1.05 billion IPO signaled strong public-market appetite for stablecoin issuers, while RLUSD issuer Ripple also completed a $500 million round at a $40 billion valuation.
XDC has managed to stake a growing claim of the $314 billion stablecoin market cap, hosting over $132 million USDC and close to $200 million in overall stablecoin liquidity.
With the GENIUS Act passed in the US and MiCA regulations in Europe, regulated stablecoins such as USDC have grown in importance for instant payment infrastructure, lending, liquidity markets, and RWA settlement.
Citi forecasts the stablecoin market could reach up to $4 trillion by 2030 with stronger global regulation and adoption, and XDC’s share of that market is expected to grow, especially as tokenization and institutional use develop further.
Coinbase’s research head David Duong credited the policy shift that delivered the GENIUS Act as the motivation for banks and corporations such as JPMorgan to finally start building the technical infrastructure to interact with stablecoins, which led to the explosion of that sector.
The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (CLARITY Act), which passed the House and moved into Senate reconciliation for later this month, provides critical provisions for DeFi platforms and sets clear guidelines for their operation. If it has a similar impact on DeFi as GENIUS had on stablecoins, Ethereum undoubtedly holds prime real estate because of the maturity of its $69 billion decentralized market.
However, as more players seek specialist chains and platforms to serve their specific use cases, XDC’s DeFi ecosystem could present a solid case as a viable alternative.
According to Defillama data, XDC currently holds around $25 million total value locked (TVL) across core DeFi applications, liquidity pools, and stablecoin activity. It has also shown positive growth potential in terms of incentive programs, liquidity incentives, lending, AMM, and yield-oriented products that attract both retail and institutional capital.
