21Shares Says Ripple Runs Just One of 35 Validators on XRP (XRP) Ledger

21Shares Disputes Ripple Control Narrative

Crypto asset manager 21Shares has publicly challenged one of the oldest claims attached to XRP (XRP) — the notion that Ripple controls both the token and the XRP Ledger — calling it a fundamental misreading of how the network actually operates. In a recent social media post, the firm quipped that XRP might be “crypto’s most misunderstood 13-year-old,” arguing that Ripple’s influence over the asset has been conflated with direct control over transaction validation. The core of the argument is arithmetic: Ripple operates just one validator among the roughly 35 entries on the XRP Ledger’s default trusted validator list, and more than 150 validators run across the network overall. Protocol amendments, moreover, generally require support from at least 80% of validators — a threshold no single company can clear on its own. The ledger’s own documentation describes it as a decentralized public blockchain and states explicitly that Ripple neither owns nor controls the network, a point 21Shares leans on heavily. Critics have pointed to Ripple’s role in building the ledger’s software and its large escrowed XRP reserves since the token’s earliest days, feeding centralization claims that persist even as the San Francisco company trimmed its validator footprint and publicized a decentralization strategy as far back as 2017. 21Shares’ position echoes the reasoning used to evaluate consensus on any layer-1 blockchain protocol: what matters is who can validate blocks and force changes, not who helped launch the network — a distinction familiar from delegated proof-of-stake systems where voting power, not founding involvement, determines control.

a recent social media posthttps://x.com/21shares/status/2097313774516461690

21Shares’ XRP Products and 2026 Scenarios

The defense is not academic. 21Shares has direct commercial exposure to the asset, which gives its argument a clear stakeholder dimension. Its European XRP ETP, ticker AXRP, launched in April 2019 and trades across a broad set of venues including SIX Swiss Exchange, Deutsche Börse Xetra, Euronext Amsterdam and Euronext Paris. In the United States, the firm entered the XRP ETF market with the 21Shares XRP ETF (TOXR) in December 2025, a fund that seeks to track the FTSE XRP Index after expenses. The issuer also published price scenarios for 2026 at the start of the year: a base case of $2.45, an optimistic case of $2.69 and a bearish floor of $1.60. The token’s market reality sits well below those marks — trading volume and price data tracked by CoinGecko placed XRP around $1.42 at the time of the firm’s post, under its own bear-case threshold. That gap frames the issuer’s messaging as much as the validator debate does: a product suite built around XRP performs best when the deepest objections to the asset are rebutted. For readers weighing an entry near current levels, our beginner’s guide to buying XRP covers the practical steps, while a separate model from ChatGPT AI recently set a similar $2.50 base case by end of 2026. Our wider XRP coverage tracks both the regulatory and market threads. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

A $2.45 Base Case Meets a $1.42 Market

COINOTAG’s reading: the most load-bearing record here is the firm’s own post, which states the validator count directly — one of roughly 35 on the default list, inside a network of 150-plus validators with an 80% amendment threshold. When the largest ETP issuer behind XRP products spends capital rebutting centralization claims, it is simultaneously defending its AXRP and TOXR franchise. The distance between the $2.45 base case and the $1.42 market price is the number to watch as 2026 scenarios get tested.