Squid, a blockchain cross-chain infrastructure company, announced on 25th June 2025 that it had completed a formal integration with D'CENT, a South Korean hardware wallet manufacturer. The partnership establishes multi-chain asset support covering XRP and RLUSD — Ripple's dollar-pegged stablecoin — and is being watched closely by the industry as a potential turning point at which the Ripple ecosystem begins to mesh in earnest with decentralised finance (DeFi) infrastructure.
Bridging cold storage and cross-chain finance
Squid is a cross-chain routing protocol built on the Axelar network that facilitates the exchange and transfer of assets across different blockchains. It currently connects more than 50 chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and the Cosmos ecosystem. The latest integration formally adds the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to its roster of supported networks.
D'CENT is a Korea-based hardware wallet company with a loyal following across Asian markets, distinguished by its biometric (fingerprint) authentication. The combination of the two firms is attracting attention because it promises users the ability to access multi-chain DeFi directly from a high-security cold wallet — historically an awkward proposition given the functional limitations of hardware devices.
RLUSD's strategic gambit in the stablecoin wars
One of the most significant elements of the integration is the inclusion of RLUSD. Issued by Ripple and approved by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) in late 2024, RLUSD is a dollar-collateralised stablecoin that has positioned itself as a challenger to the Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) duopoly.
With the overall stablecoin market surpassing $160 billion in 2025, RLUSD is leading with regulatory compliance as its core selling point, targeting institutional investors and fintech firms. The Squid integration gives RLUSD a pathway to expand its liquidity beyond a single chain and into major EVM-compatible networks such as Ethereum and Polygon.
Research firm Messari has found that cross-chain mobility correlates strongly with a stablecoin's adoption rate. Availability across a wider range of chains tends to translate into deeper participation in decentralised exchange (DEX) liquidity pools and broader payment-channel reach.
Aligning with XRPL's DeFi ambitions
Since 2024, Ripple has been accelerating its push into decentralised finance. It introduced automated market maker (AMM) functionality to the XRPL and has been building an EVM-compatible sidechain layer. The XRPL Foundation has meanwhile been actively courting DeFi projects through developer grant programmes. Integrations with cross-chain infrastructure providers such as Squid are a natural extension of this strategy.
Industry observers offer layered assessments of the partnership's significance. Analysts at blockchain consultancy Delphi Digital have noted that "the XRPL has long been perceived as a fast payments layer, but through cross-chain bridge integrations it is beginning to demonstrate its potential as a DeFi layer as well." Sceptics counter that the XRPL's smart-contract capabilities remain limited compared with the Ethereum ecosystem, arguing that this constrains its practical utility for DeFi in the near term.
D'CENT's repositioning in a competitive hardware wallet market
The global hardware wallet market is dominated by Ledger and Trezor. However, Ledger's controversial "Recovery Service" launch in 2023 sharpened security awareness among users and increased demand for alternatives. D'CENT has exploited this opening by emphasising its biometric security credentials, steadily building market share in Asia.
The Squid integration reads as part of a deliberate strategy by D'CENT to redefine itself not merely as a storage device but as a "DeFi access hub." It is an attempt to offset the perennial weakness of hardware wallets relative to software alternatives such as MetaMask or Phantom — namely, that their security advantage comes at the cost of functional versatility — by embedding cross-chain capabilities directly into the device experience.
Regulatory tailwinds and headwinds
The integration also intersects with a rapidly evolving global regulatory environment. In the United States, legislative debate around the GENIUS Act — a proposed stablecoin framework — gained momentum in 2025, while the European Union has been enforcing its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation in full. Analysts suggest that if RLUSD, as a compliance-first stablecoin, can expand its distribution into European and Asian markets via cross-chain infrastructure, the conditions for accelerated institutional capital inflows would be in place.
That said, the security risks inherent in cross-chain bridges remain a live concern. According to Chainalysis, losses from cross-chain bridge exploits reached approximately $2 billion in 2022 alone. While the Axelar network that underpins Squid uses a validator-based consensus mechanism to bolster security, smart-contract vulnerabilities in complex cross-chain environments will require ongoing vigilance.
The infrastructure layer race intensifies
The Squid–D'CENT collaboration is a telling sign that competition in the blockchain infrastructure layer is entering a new phase. With Wormhole, LayerZero, Chainlink CCIP, and a host of other cross-chain protocols vying to become the market standard, exclusive partnerships with specific wallets and ecosystems are emerging as a key strategy for locking in users.
For the Ripple ecosystem, the integration means that distribution channels for both XRP and RLUSD are extended, at a stroke, to dozens of additional chains. In the longer run, should the XRPL succeed in building both an institutional-grade payments rail and a DeFi liquidity layer simultaneously, XRP could be reappraised as a practical financial infrastructure asset rather than a purely speculative one. The Squid–D'CENT integration is a small but symbolically charged event at the very beginning of that structural transformation.