Bitquery's Sept. 10 audit found 767 machine-classified accounts generated 92% of the XRP Ledger's 81.56 million August transactions, even as the network passed 5.06 billion cumulative validated transactions. One address alone submitted nearly 13 million transactions, of which only 882 became trades, while settled built-in DEX trades totaled 2.97 million from 12,153 accounts.
XRP Ledger passed 5.06 billion validated transactions while 767 machine-classified accounts produced 92% of everything the network processed in August, according to an audit published Sept. 10 by blockchain data firm Bitquery. The finding separates ledger throughput from the demand it is routinely cited to prove.
Bitquery's breakdown shows 793 sender accounts generated 75.98 million of XRPL's 81.56 million August transactions, or 93.2% of the month's activity. Of those, 767 were classified as machines. Twenty-six exchange hot wallets added another 1.1%. "The concentration is a structural feature of how automated strategies interact with a low-fee ledger," Bitquery wrote in the audit, which measured addresses rather than individual users.
The account-level detail is starker than the aggregate. One address submitted almost 13 million transactions in August, including 12.79 million built-in DEX orders — of which 882 resulted in trades. That single account accounted for roughly one-sixth of all XRPL activity for the month. Across the ledger, Bitquery counted 2,970,922 settled trades on XRPL's built-in exchange from 12,153 accounts, a fraction of the 81 million-plus transactions recorded.
DEX order bots alone generated 39.25 million transactions, or 48.1% of August traffic. Dust-spraying accounts contributed 18.79 million more, with NFT automation, check spam and other machine categories filling out the remainder. At the other end, nearly half of August's active accounts sent a single transaction and four-fifths sent five or fewer. Bitquery's lower-frequency filter, which strips out dust-level transfers, captured 89.6% of transacting accounts but just 0.8% of total ledger activity.
The gap between submitted activity and economic execution is the number that matters for anyone using transaction counts as a proxy for adoption. XRP traded at $1.36 as of 15:20 UTC on Sept. 10, down 4.07% over 24 hours and 6.28% over seven days, though still up 36.31% over 30 days, per CoinGecko data. The token's 30-day gain sits against a month of record headline throughput, which suggests the market has not priced the milestone as a demand signal.
Evernorth Research's quarterly data, published Sept. 2, points to a related shift in who is actually trading. Order-book volume averaged 3.57 million XRP a day in the second quarter, up 79% from a year earlier, while the average number of accounts initiating those trades fell to 1,111 a day from 1,864. Volume per trading account rose to 3,217 XRP from 1,072. Across XRPL's broader DEX, trading averaged 4.42 million XRP a day, about 20% higher year over year, from roughly 2,435 daily accounts.
Evernorth attributed part of that to professional flow taking a larger share as XRPL added institution-facing infrastructure, including permissioned domains and trading venues. Capital on the network expanded alongside it: average value held on XRPL reached $4.26 billion in the quarter, the highest in Evernorth's six-quarter series, while RLUSD balances averaged $539 million, up 642% from a year earlier, and value moved through the stablecoin rose 925%.
Broader participation moved the other way. Daily transacting accounts averaged 16,587 and new accounts 2,783, both down about 25% year over year. Evernorth said account counts are more sensitive to retail activity, which retreated across crypto markets during the quarter.
For XRP specifically, the commercial question is where the growing capital actually trades. Evernorth's figures count swaps involving XRP and exclude trades between two non-XRP assets — transactions that represented 18% of trades and roughly 9% of value in the second quarter. Activity can therefore expand on XRPL without passing through XRP at all, which is the mechanism by which a rising transaction count and a flat token price can coexist.
The comparison to peers is instructive. Bitcoin and Ethereum carry similar automated traffic — arbitrage bots, MEV searchers, spam — but their headline metrics are usually quoted in settled value or fee revenue rather than raw transaction counts, precisely because counts are cheap to inflate on low-fee chains. XRPL's sub-cent fees make it unusually easy to generate millions of transactions at negligible cost, which is why Bitquery's settled-trade figure of 2.97 million is a more useful denominator than the 81.56 million headline.
Bitquery's own caveat cuts both ways. Addresses are not users: one exchange wallet can represent thousands of customers, and a single trading firm can operate many addresses. The 767-account figure therefore overstates user concentration in one direction and understates it in another, depending on how the accounts are controlled.
The next quarters will show whether the concentration reflects a more institutional market or remains automated traffic. For firms committing capital to XRPL, the signals to watch are sustained growth in settled trades, recurring transacting accounts, and liquidity that keeps routing through XRP rather than around it. Evernorth's next quarterly release, expected in early December, will be the first read on whether the second-quarter pattern held through the third.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
