The Depth Lab
This page computes the XRP price implied by a set of assumptions about standing liquidity ("depth") on the XRPL decentralized exchange. Each knob is one assumption; turn it and every number recomputes.
How to read this lab. An argument is valid when its conclusion necessarily follows from its premises. It is sound when it is valid and its premises are true. This lab guarantees validity. You supply the truth of the premises.
We choose the knobs, which means we choose which assumptions the answer needs, and we prove the math between them. You set every knob. The preset the page loads with is only one scenario; replace it with your own. The price is a prediction conditional on your assumptions, never a forecast of the market.
Reality check — today, measured
Measured readings of the present, beside what your knobs demand — the distance is the size of the bet
The knobs above model a future. The readings in this card measure the present, so you can see the distance between the two instead of guessing at it. Live readings refresh daily. Readings that come from an older snapshot are labeled with their date.
The knobs — you own every assumption
How to use the knobs, what the dials mean, and what the ring colors say
Drag a knob up or down, focus it and use the arrow keys, or click its value to type an exact figure. Each knob's value is yours to set; the preset is only one example. The small dial attached to each knob is its confidence dial, and it means one thing: how firmly you trust that value (● measured · ◐ reasoned · ○ speculative). The dial never changes the math. It only records how sure you are of the input, and those grades roll up into the confidence shown under each answer — that roll-up is your confidence the thesis plays out. Every dial reads the same way; the dials on the amber speculation knobs (the monetary markup, the off-market float master, the escrow date, and the forward-growth multiple when it is claimed) additionally gate the speculative price's confidence on top of the floor's (the grade ⓘ explains how). Knobs that are coupled (the model moves them together to stay consistent) glow while you turn. One coupling only points: when a knob changes what the fees can sustain, the head ticket knob glows and the caption says what that means. The ticket is a demand claim — fees cap it, volume never raises it — so the "size to fees" control lights up only when the fees no longer pay for the claim, and the ticket moves only when you click it.
The model computes a utility floor, then multiplies a speculative premium onto it to get the final price (price = floor × premium layer). The ring color on each knob says which of those two results the knob affects, and the board below is sectioned by that same color: one section per layer. Read the sections top-down, because that is the order the machine works in: the flow pays for the depth (Funding), the funded depth buys a curve and the ticket it clears (Utility — the ticket knob prints the ticket your funding knobs sustain and a "size to fees" control), and speculation stacks on the floor that curve implies (Speculation). Blue = utility. A blue knob moves the utility floor (the blue tile). Because the final price is built on the floor, a blue knob moves the price too, in the same proportion. Amber = speculation. An amber knob moves only the premium layer, so it changes the final price (the amber tile) and never the floor. The relationship runs one way: floor changes flow into the price, and premium changes never flow back into the floor. Teal = funding. A teal knob moves neither result directly. It feeds the teal-outlined tests below the tiles, which ask whether the required depth can earn enough to justify the capital committed to it — and because the head ticket is sized to what those fees sustain, the ticket and the floor follow the teal knobs (every range fold and impact score re-solves the ticket). Its confidence dial feeds the confidence grades. The funding test also prints a per-tier line: the plateau carries most of the flow, the tail most of the depth, so the tail's shortfall beyond its own fees is shown as the strategic or cross-subsidy claim it is. Violet = fold. One knob (lateral influence) claims how much your ranges move together. It reshapes the range-average headlines shown while ranges are open; it never touches the claims, the "logic permits" hull, or the tests. Grey = lens. A lens is a viewing choice, not a claim: the target year dates the answer. A lens moves no total and has no confidence dial. (One blue knob also moves no total: the freed-token split in the supply block, which says where the tokens the printed price frees from the pools land; it is blue because it is that block's own allocation claim, and it follows the withheld family and the tradeable float as they turn.) Each knob's ⓘ names its layer.
Funding — the flow that pays for the depth (start here: this is what the machine can afford)
Utility — what the funded depth buys: the shape of the curve and the ticket it clears
Utility, continued: permissioned domains — where the regulated tickets clear, and what that venue costs
What these knobs claim — the compliance wall on the ledger, and why it moves the plateau's bill from the pool column to the book column
Since February 2026 the XRP Ledger carries a compliance layer. A credential is an on-ledger attestation an issuer (a bank, a KYC provider, a fund administrator) puts on your account; the documents stay off-chain. A permissioned domain is a list of accepted credentials; hold one and you are in. A permissioned offer carries a domain ID and matches only against offers in the same domain. Two consequences drive this block. A permissioned offer can never be filled by an AMM, and no AMM can be gated, so regulated flow gets none of the public pool's parked capital; and one transaction cannot span two domains, so venues that do not share credentials are separate books with separate inventory. The regulated flow is the head plateau, the majors, so these knobs act on the plateau only: the permissioned share says how much of the plateau's on-ledger tickets must clear inside a domain, the isolated domain count says how many books stand their own inventory for the same pair, and the domain-book inventory says what one such book holds. Read them against the pool: a public pool needs about 2,000 tickets of reserve to clear one ticket at 5 bp; a book needs about ten. So moving the plateau into domains lowers the bill, and fragmentation multiplies a small number. What raises it back is the head on-ledger share in the section above: dealers now have a compliant on-ledger book, so more of the majors' tickets can print on the ledger at all. Open any knob's ⓘ for the mechanism and the amendment dates.
Utility, continued: the supply accounting — where every XRP is, and what is left to hold the depth
What these knobs claim — the share of supply held off the market, and why the price rides what remains
The XRP that holds the depth has no starting point of its own, so this block concludes it from the states of supply that can be measured. Every XRP at your horizon is in exactly one of four states. Locked: still in escrow (the escrow knob sets how much has been released). Withheld: off the market entirely — balance-sheet holders (digital-asset treasury companies, corporates, sovereign reserves), tokens locked in yield vaults, and holders who keep their XRP out of conviction. Tradeable: on the books and willing to trade, the one state the ledger measures today (exchange balances, active supply). Parked as depth: what is left, working in pools and dealer inventory. The floor divides the dollars of depth by that parked count, so escrow and the withheld float raise the price through the token count and nowhere else. The total of the claims can never exceed the circulating supply: a knob turned past the cap is held at its limit and the page says so. The master knob's confidence dial carries the withheld family's doubt in the floor grade. Open any knob's ⓘ for the mechanism. One more step closes the accounting at the price the page prints. At the floor, the parked tokens are worth exactly the depth the machine needs, so the sentence above adds up by construction. At the printed price the same tokens are worth the markup times the need, and capital that cannot earn its hurdle leaves the pools for the yield the withheld family and the tradeable float already model. So the supply line under the price prints the jointly funded allocation: parked is the need ÷ the price, and the rest of the residual migrates in the split the freed-token knob sets. That knob moves no total: the floor and the price are the same at every setting.