Ripple

Ripple built RippleNet on a genuinely real problem — cross-border payments are still slow and expensive through the traditional correspondent banking system — and signed a real roster of financial institutions to use it. What's muddied the picture is XRP itself: years of SEC litigation over whether it's a security cast a long shadow over the company, and even with that mostly resolved, stablecoins have emerged as a more boring but more popular way to move money across borders. The infrastructure business is real; the token thesis is the part still being argued over.