All the money is coming: how XRP, Solana, Hedera, Canton and Chainlink are moving real-world value on-chain

For years, “all the money is coming on-chain” sounded like a meme. Now we finally have hard evidence that it’s actually starting to happen.

A new handbook from the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) – backed by contributors like the World Bank, European Central Bank, Bank of Canada and major private institutions – maps out 101 real-world blockchain use cases. It shows how value in payments, real estate, carbon markets, aid, and capital markets is already moving to networks like XRP Ledger, Hedera, Solana, Canton, Chainlink and others.

Below is a breakdown of the most interesting examples, why they matter, and what they hint at for the next wave of crypto adoption.

The GBBC handbook: 101 real-world blockchain use cases

The GBBC’s 2026 edition of its “101 Real-World Blockchain Use Cases” is one of the clearest snapshots yet of institutional blockchain adoption.

According to the report:

• The global stock of real estate, bonds, commodities and private credit is worth around $450 trillion.
• Less than $40 billion of that currently sits on blockchains (excluding stablecoins).
• Yet there are already over 100 live or advanced pilot use cases across finance, sustainability, identity, healthcare, aid, and more.

The big takeaway: we are still at a tiny fraction of the total addressable market, but the pipelines from traditional finance into crypto rails are now built and being tested at scale.

Hedera in Australia: real CBDC claims, not just sandbox pilots

One of the most important examples in the handbook – and one that’s easy to miss if you just skim – is Project Acacia in Australia, led by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

Hedera played a central role here, and the key detail is crucial: this was not another sandbox proof-of-concept. It involved real claims on central bank money.

Project Acacia: tokenized bank accounts and CBDC movements

In Project Acacia, participating banks effectively tokenized their settlement accounts with the central bank. That means:

• Banks held real balances at the RBA.
• Those balances were tokenized and moved on Hedera infrastructure.
• CBDC movements were synchronized with delivery-versus-payment (DvP) atomic settlement – both legs of each transaction settling simultaneously.

Hedera was the only ecosystem in the project that operated with both public and private environments in the same architecture. This allowed:

• Public tokenization and trading of assets on Hedera mainnet.
• Private, permissioned CBDC and stablecoin infrastructure in a separate environment, still cryptographically linked.

As Rob Allen from Hedera put it, the industry is moving from “proofs of concept” to proofs of value – real money, real risk, and real legal frameworks engaged.

Imperium Markets and tokenized deposits

One standout Acacia use case involved Imperium Markets, the only licensed marketplace in Australia for term deposits, negotiable certificates of deposit (NCDs) and annuities.

Imperium originally integrated with R3 Corda, but later switched to Hedera. In the pilot:

• Term deposits, NCDs and annuities were tokenized as digital twins on Hedera.
• These instruments were recorded, custodied and traded on-chain.
• Settlement used a stablecoin backed by a wrapped CBDC in a private Hedera-based environment.

Participating banks included major Australian names like National Australia Bank, Westpac and Bank of Queensland.

The broader opportunity is huge: Hedera estimates a $24 billion annual opportunity in new value from tokenization in Australia alone, with only about $1 billion currently captured.

Hedera and real-world assets: RedSwan, Archax and carbon markets

Beyond central bank pilots, Hedera appears repeatedly in the GBBC handbook in three big areas: real estate, capital markets, and sustainability.

RedSwan: $5 billion in tokenized commercial real estate

The handbook states that RedSwan, a digital real estate platform, has tokenized more than $5 billion in commercial real estate using Hedera’s token services. These assets are structured so investors can gain fractional exposure to high-value properties.

Interestingly, public aggregators like RWA.xyz currently show only a small fraction of that value as “distributed” tokens on Hedera, with the rest appearing as “represented” assets (where the blockchain is used as a record-keeping layer, but not yet for open on-chain transfer). That gap highlights how underreported real-world tokenization still is.

Archax: multi-asset pool tokens with BlackRock and State Street

Another major Hedera example in the report is Archax, a regulated digital asset exchange and custodian in the UK.

Archax is launching the world’s first multi-asset pool token on Hedera in 2025. The initial use case combines money market funds from giants like:

• Aberdeen
• BlackRock
• State Street
• Legal & General

All of these are wrapped into a single, composable token. Over time, Archax envisions pool tokens that can bundle traditional funds, crypto, commodities and even collectibles (think: a basket that includes HBAR, SOL, a money market fund and a fraction of a rare Pokémon card) into one on-chain instrument.

Guardian and carbon markets

Hedera’s Guardian framework for ESG and sustainability also features heavily:

• Fairfood International uses Hedera Guardian to anchor farmer payments and carbon credit verification.
• Protocols like KLIMA are experimenting with dual-layer markets for pricing heterogeneous carbon credits.

The voluntary carbon market alone is projected to reach $50 billion by 2030, and Hedera has quietly built one of the most mature on-chain stacks for verifiable environmental assets.

Canton: the institutional capital markets network

While Hedera is strong in tokenization, ESG and CBDC pilots, the GBBC report makes it clear that Canton Network is becoming a central hub for institutional capital markets.

Canton is a privacy-preserving, interoperable network that connects multiple permissioned DLT applications. It’s backed by players like Digital Asset, with participants including major banks, market infrastructures and asset managers.

DTCC, Nasdaq and JPMorgan on Canton

Some of the most notable Canton use cases in the handbook include:

• DTCC (through its DTC subsidiary) choosing Canton to settle U.S. Treasuries, unlocking the potential to move trillions of dollars of collateral 24/7.
• Nasdaq connecting its Calypso platform – used by financial institutions to manage risk, margin, collateral and inventory – to Canton for real-time collateral workflows.
• JPMorgan integrating its systems with Canton, alongside other experiments the bank is running with tokenized deposits and on-chain settlement.

The Linux Foundation’s Decentralized Trust initiative, which also custodies Hedera’s open-source codebase, explicitly mentions Canton, underscoring how these networks are part of a broader institutional stack rather than isolated silos.

XRP and Ripple: from exotic corridors to AI-native payments

Ripple and the XRP Ledger appear in the GBBC handbook and in separate announcements that point toward two big themes: real-world payments and AI-native money.

Parametric climate aid in Kenya

One Ripple-related use case in the handbook is a parametric climate aid project in Kenya. Here, Ripple Impact used a Ripple-issued USD stablecoin (RLUSD) to deliver automatic, smart-contract-based payouts to pastoralists during drought events.

The flow looks like this:

• Climate data triggers a parametric insurance condition (e.g., rainfall below a certain level).
• Smart contracts release RLUSD to affected pastoralists within hours.
• Funds are distributed via local partners and mobile infrastructure.

This kind of programmable aid is a powerful example of how blockchain and stablecoins can improve disaster response, especially in regions with weak banking infrastructure.

The XRP Ledger AI starter kit: agentic payments

Ripple has also introduced the XRP Ledger AI Starter Kit, aimed at enabling agentic payments – where AI agents can hold wallets, pay for services and settle value autonomously.

The kit includes:

• Support for X4.2 internet-native payments using XRP and Ripple USD.
• Wallet and payment “skills” for AI models like Claude, so agents can be given structured access to XRPL actions (paying, getting paid, interacting with on-chain services).

Why this matters: as AI agents increasingly consume APIs, compute and data, they’ll need native payment rails that are fast, predictable and programmable. XRPL’s low, fiat-pegged fees and built-in DEX make it a strong candidate for this kind of machine-to-machine commerce.

If you’re already following XRP for cross-border payments, this AI angle adds another long-term vector for utility. For more on how some investors are positioning around XRP and real-world assets, see this breakdown of why one investor is still buying XRP and HBAR.

Chainlink: interoperability for tokenized money and funds

Chainlink shows up in the GBBC handbook as the glue between tokenized money, tokenized funds and existing financial platforms.

Hong Kong’s e-HKD pilot

Under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s e-HKD pilot, Chainlink was used to support cross-border settlement involving:

• Visa
• China AMC
• Fidelity International

The solution connected tokenized money, multiple blockchains and financial platforms, enabling secure, programmable transactions across jurisdictions. Chainlink’s role included:

• CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol) for privacy-preserving cross-chain messaging and transfers.
• Smart NAV and a digital transfer agent standard to fetch net asset value data and automate the issuance of tokenized fund units.

The result: less operational complexity at the point of fund issuance and settlement, and a clearer path for traditional asset managers to bring products on-chain.

Solana: DePIN, energy data and mainstream integrations

Solana appears in the GBBC report and in parallel announcements as a major base layer for high-throughput, low-cost applications – especially in DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure) and consumer-facing integrations.

DePIN and energy data

One example from the handbook is Oncoy, which is building a decentralized GPS connectivity layer on Solana for the $43 billion global GNSS market, currently dominated by expensive, centralized providers.

Another is an energy data platform called Open Grid, developed by Storm Energy with TrackGenesis. It uses NFTs as digital receipts and connects to Regen Network and Solana so that environmental credits can be verified and tracked across chains.

World Series of Poker and consumer payments

Outside the handbook, Solana has also landed more mainstream visibility:

• The World Series of Poker named Solana a presenting sponsor as the event returns to ESPN.
• Through partners like MoonPay, the World Series of Poker now accepts crypto buy-ins, including SOL and stablecoins.

These kinds of deals don’t move trillions, but they do normalize crypto as a payment method for millions of viewers and participants.

Cardano, Stellar, Algorand and humanitarian aid

The GBBC handbook also highlights how several networks are being used for aid, remittances and social impact.

• Cardano: The World Food Programme has tested Cardano-based coordination tools to improve how aid is allocated and tracked, aiming for more equitable distribution.
• Algorand: The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worked with Afghan fintech firm HesabPay to deliver over $34 million to 136,000 Afghan refugee families, cutting transaction costs to around 1%.
• Stellar: Since late 2022, UNHCR has used Circle’s USDC on Stellar to send aid to displaced families in Ukraine and Argentina, reducing banking fees by around 4% and speeding up delivery.

These use cases show that blockchain isn’t just for speculative trading – it can make a real difference in how quickly and cheaply vulnerable populations receive support.

AI, agents and why network design matters

Across all of these examples, one emerging theme is the convergence of AI and blockchain. As AI agents start to transact on their own, network design becomes critical:

• Fees need to be predictable (ideally pegged to fiat) so agents can optimize costs.
• Ordering and finality need to be fast and fair so machine-to-machine workflows don’t break.
• Identity, permissions and compliance need to be built into the stack.

Hedera, for example, leans into this with fair ordering and dollar-pegged fees. Ripple is pushing XRPL toward agentic payments with its AI starter kit. Mastercard is piloting Agent Pay with over 30 partners across cards, stablecoins and L1s, including Solana, Hedera, Coinbase and Ripple.

Most enterprises don’t care about the underlying protocol names – they care about saving or making money while managing risk. AI will accelerate that by forcing companies to adopt infrastructure that can support autonomous, programmable transactions at scale.

Why “all the money” is no longer just a meme

Putting all of this together, the GBBC handbook and related announcements paint a clear picture:

• We’re still under $40 billion in tokenized real-world assets on-chain, versus a $450 trillion pool of global value.
• Yet there are already live or advanced pilots across central banks, major banks, asset managers, market infrastructures, NGOs and tech giants.
• Networks like XRP Ledger, Hedera, Solana, Canton and Chainlink are each carving out niches – from CBDC and capital markets to ESG, DePIN and AI-native payments.

Whether the big numbers hit by 2030 or a few years later almost doesn’t matter. The key shift is that the pipes now exist. Central bank money has been tokenized in real financial systems. Billions in real estate and money market funds are being wrapped into on-chain instruments. Aid, remittances and climate payouts are moving over stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

For long-term investors, this is why many still focus on networks with clear institutional and real-world hooks – even in choppy markets. If you’re thinking about how to position around that, you may also find it useful to read how one investor is DCA-ing into the current crypto downturn.

The bottom line: it won’t be “one chain to rule them all.” But as these 101 use cases show, all the money really is starting to touch crypto rails – and we’re still incredibly early in that process.