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Head-to-head · Stablecoins

GHO (Aave) vs Ripple USD (RLUSD) Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads by 19 points.

Ripple USD (RLUSD) scores 19 points above GHO (Aave), led by counterparty and insolvency rank, redemption right exercised, and reserve and assurance scope. GHO (Aave) ranks #8 and Ripple USD (RLUSD) #3 of 11 published stablecoins. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.

GHO (Aave)56
Ripple USD (RLUSD)75
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #8 and #3 of 11
Methodology v2026.10.18Ranking snapshot Evidence verified through 4 published criteria5 score dimensions Receipt #cc-VS-GHO-AAVE-VS-RIPPLE-USD-RLUSD-a2eeff9c
Published verdictRanking snapshot 3 November 2026

Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads by 19 points

Ripple USD (RLUSD) scores 19 points above GHO (Aave), led by counterparty and insolvency rank, redemption right exercised, and reserve and assurance scope.

GHO (Aave) #8 of 1156
Ripple USD (RLUSD) #3 of 1175
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termRipple USD (RLUSD) leads on 3 of 4 published criteria; GHO (Aave) on 1. The terms sum to the gap.
TermRipple USD (RLUSD)GHO (Aave)WeightPoints
Counterparty and insolvency rank5/101/107.2+7.5for Ripple USD (RLUSD)+3.8 of 32
Redemption right exercised5/103/106.7+3.5for Ripple USD (RLUSD)+1.8 of 32
Reserve and assurance scope8/102/105.8+9.0for Ripple USD (RLUSD)+4.6 of 32
Seizure and upgrade authority5/106/104.3−1.1for GHO (Aave)−0.6 of 32
Net of the terms+18.8
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread−0.1
Reproduced gap+18.7
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below7556+19.0

Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.

  • A row-above bound on one row means the criterion arithmetic does not reproduce the displayed gap exactly.
Quick facts

At a glance

2 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactGHO (Aave)Ripple USD (RLUSD)
PricingSnapshotPUBLISHED (marketing, https://aave.com/gho, fetched 29 September 2026): "Swap USDC, USDT for GHO at 1:1 — free to redeem." The same page's numeric counters (Max swap fee, Total Backing, Total Reserves, current borrow and savings rates) are still rendered client-side and serve placeholders to a non-browser fetch, so no fee or rate figure is readable from the page as published; the quoted sentence is the only static fee statement on it. NO BINDING DOCUMENT PRICES ANYTHING: the Aave Terms of Service (https://aave.com/terms-of-service, rewritten, "Updated 07 September 2026") and the Aave App Terms of Service (https://aave.com/legal/app/terms-of-service, "Updated 14 August 2026"), both fetched 29 September 2026, contain no mint fee, no redemption fee and no minimum, and mention GHO only in the footer menu. ACTUAL LIVE PRICING, read on-chain 29 September 2026 at Ethereum block 26,082,183 via https://ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com: GSM_USDT 0x882285E62656b9623AF136Ce3078c6BdCc33F5E3 returns getFeeStrategy() = 0x06fbDE909B43f01202E3C6207De1D27cC208AcC1, whose getSellFee(1e18) = 0 and getBuyFee(1e18) = 1e15, i.e. 0.00% to convert USDT into GHO and 0.10% to convert GHO back out; GSM_USDC 0x3A3868898305f04beC7FEa77BecFf04C13444112 now returns a DIFFERENT strategy, 0xfDB0090A92d20EE39d82ac680477b1F58f0A23dE, whose getSellFee(1e18) = 0 and getBuyFee(1e18) = 1.5e15, i.e. 0.15% to leave via USDC (on 19 August 2026 both GSMs used the 0.10% strategy). WORKED EXAMPLE (label: on-chain read, not a page price): GSM_USDT getGhoAmountForBuyAsset(1000000000) returns 1,000.000000 waEthUSDT for 1,178.220242 GHO, of which gross 1,177.043199 GHO and fee 1.177043 GHO. CAPACITY: GSM_USDT getAvailableLiquidity() = 16,136,899.348701 waEthUSDT (worth 19,012,821.45 GHO by getGhoAmountForBuyAsset) and GSM_USDC 0.029227 waEthUSDC, so the par exit covers 2.72% of the 699,000,000 GHO supply (7.60% on 19 August 2026); the exit pays a wrapped Aave deposit receipt (waEthUSDT / waEthUSDC), not dollars. There is NO minimum and NO account requirement: buyAsset and sellAsset carry only the notFrozen and notSeized modifiers, and getIsFrozen() and getIsSeized() both return false on both GSMs. BORROWING: Aave v3 Pool 0x87870Bca3F3fD6335C3F4ce8392D69350B4fA4E2 getReserveData(GHO) at the same block returns currentVariableBorrowRate = 4.25% (3.75% on 19 August 2026). CAUTION FOR THE NEXT READER: neither live fee-strategy address appears in Aave's own documentation, https://aave.com/docs/ecosystem/gho.md (fetched 29 September 2026), whose address table still lists GSMUSDCFixedFeeStrategy 0xE5025A7c15a44283A0616567181587eE6A646D64 and GSMUSDTFixedFeeStrategy 0xA4346AEa575fCf5777D32F419E5850E5c68B2329; all fees above were read from the live contracts.NO FEE SCHEDULE AND NO MINIMUM IS PUBLISHED ANYWHERE — a silence finding, re-established on 29 September 2026. (1) THE BINDING TERMS, https://ripple.com/legal/stablecoin/ (still stamped "Last updated: October 3, 2024", fetched 29 September 2026): the string "Fee" appears exactly once, in §11.10: "Although a Customer can always redeem one (1) RLUSD for 1 U.S. dollar ($1) with Ripple, less Fees, Ripple cannot control how third parties quote or value RLUSD, and Ripple is not responsible for any losses or other issues that may result from fluctuations in the value of RLUSD." "Fees" is capitalised as a defined term and defined nowhere in this document; the definition belongs to the RLUSD Customer Agreement. "minimum" also occurs once, about the Reserve's market value, not about redemption. (2) THE GOVERNING DOCUMENT IS UNREACHABLE: https://ripple.com/legal/ returns HTTP 404; the legal navigation on the terms page still lists eleven documents and the RLUSD Customer Agreement is not among them; https://ripple.com/legal/rlusd-customer-agreement/ and https://ripple.com/legal/stablecoin-customer-agreement/ both returned HTTP 404 on 29 September 2026. (3) THE OTHER ISSUER SURFACES ARE SILENT: the whitepaper (https://ripple.com/reports/rlusd-whitepaper.pdf, "Version date — June 4, 2026") describes the issuance and redemption flows and states no fee, no minimum ticket and no settlement deadline; the transparency page (https://ripple.com/products/stablecoin/transparency/) says "redemptions with strict SLAs" and publishes no SLA, fee or minimum. (4) WHAT IS PUBLISHED INSTEAD, AND IT IS NOT A PRICE: the whitepaper's eligibility rule, "RLUSD is distributed to enterprise partners only. Ripple will not conduct B2C transactions", and its reserve buffer, "to ensure the total value of RLUSD reserve assets always equals at least 103% of the total RLUSD in circulation". An undisclosed price is not the same as a low one; this record scores it as an absence, not a benefit — no list price is published, so cost cannot be compared before a sales conversation.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotglobalglobal
From the published criteria

Which should you pick?

GHO (Aave)

56#8 of 11
Pick it when
Pick GHO (Aave) if seizure and upgrade authority matters most — it scores 6/10 to Ripple USD (RLUSD)'s 5/10 there (weight 18).
Strength
Seizure and upgrade authority — 6/10
Tradeoff
Nobody owes you anything, and the page that says otherwise is not a contract. aave.com/gho sells GHO as "Every GHO is backed by more than $1 of crypto held inside Aave." and "Swap USDC, USDT for GHO at 1:1 — free to redeem." — but the only binding documents Aave publishes, its Terms of Service (Updated 07 September 2026) and Aave App Terms of Service (Updated 14 August 2026), never use the words 'redeem' or 'redemption', never mention GHO outside the footer menu, name two different counterparties ('Aave Labs' and 'Aave Interfaces Ltd'), and state "We do not act as your broker, exchange, lender, borrower, counterparty, agent, adviser, trustee or fiduciary in connection with your use of the Protocol." and "We do not take possession, custody or control of your digital assets or funds." What you get instead is better than nothing and worse than a right: a permissionless protocol swap facility that any wallet can use today with no account, no KYC and no minimum — but it charges 0.10% to leave through the USDT leg and 0.15% through the USDC leg while entry is free, it pays you a wrapped Aave deposit receipt rather than dollars, on 2026-09-29 it covered 19.01m GHO against a 699,000,000 supply (2.72%), with the USDC leg down to 0.029227 units, and a single governance transaction can switch it off. That is exactly what happened to its predecessor on 2025-03-17, when $24.0m of exit inventory was swept to the treasury in one transaction and both swap contracts were disabled for good, with no un-seize function in the code.

Ripple USD (RLUSD)

75#3 of 11
Leads
Pick it when
Pick Ripple USD (RLUSD) if counterparty and insolvency rank matters most — it scores 5/10 to GHO (Aave)'s 1/10 there (weight 30).
Strength
Reserve and assurance scope — 8/10
Tradeoff
The regulatory scaffolding around RLUSD is genuinely better than most of this pool, and the reserve disclosure is the best in it — CUSIP-level, Deloitte-examined, monthly, with a named custodian. None of that is the same thing as a claim you can enforce, and the gap between the two is this record's whole point. The binding RLUSD User Terms say the reserve is “segregated from SCTC's other assets” and then say, in the same subsection, “RLUSD does not convey any direct or indirect property interest in or right to withdraw any assets held in the Reserve”, and later that “Ripple does not provide any trust or fiduciary services to any User under these Terms.” Meanwhile the whitepaper says deposits are “held specifically for the benefit of RLUSD holders”, the attestation criteria say the Reserve holds assets “on behalf of RLUSD holders”, and the OCC letter describes “collateral trustee services for the benefit of RLUSD holders on a fiduciary basis” — for a bank that does not yet exist, under an approval the OCC expressly labels preliminary. The contract governs, and it gives the holder a segregation covenant with no stated insolvency rank, no property interest and no fiduciary duty. Second caveat, on comparability: the 2026-09-29 re-read raised criterion 2 from 4 to 5, the bottom of the band the methodology names for RLUSD, and level with USDC. The terms grant every holder a redemption right and then condition it on becoming a Customer, and the 2026 whitepaper's gate is the same shape as Circle Mint's closure to individuals, which the ladder already weighs for USDC in that band: “Ripple will not conduct B2C transactions.” Third: the terms are stale in a way that matters. They are stamped “Last updated: October 3, 2024” — and still so on 2026-09-29, almost two years on — and in the interim the OCC preliminarily approved a Ripple national trust bank intended to hold the reserve as collateral trustee. If that bank opens, the custody architecture behind this coin changes and the binding document describing it will not have moved. Finally, one number that is not a defect but should not be misread: the LEI on the current whitepaper resolves to the right company with entity status ACTIVE, but its GLEIF REGISTRATION status is LAPSED. Those are different fields; a lapsed identifier registration is not a lapsed charter, and it is scored as nothing more. Two things changed when every document was read again. First, the NYDFS redeemability question is settled, in Ripple's favour on the gate itself: the June 8, 2022 guidance, retrieved this session as bytes from the Internet Archive's raw replay of the dfs.ny.gov URL, confers a par redemption right on “any lawful holder” but expressly subjects it to “reasonable, non-burdensome conditions … such as the ability of the stablecoin holder to onboard successfully with the Issuer before redeeming.” The regulator permits the onboarding gate. What the regulator also requires — “clear, conspicuous redemption policies, approved in advance by DFS in writing”, with a default of T+2 where the issuer does not state its own — Ripple does not publish, which is why criterion 2 goes no higher than 5, the bottom of its band. Second, criterion 4 scores 5, not 6: the chain has twenty role grants; the MINTER and BURNER roles are held not only behind the multisig but also by a Wormhole NttManager proxy that appears in no Ripple document; and because MultiSign weights signatures, replacing the code takes three signatures, not seven. The freeze power had been exercised 192 times by August 2026; the 2026-09-29 re-read counts 214 against 214 distinct addresses since August 2024, 22 of them new and most on 2026-08-25, with not a single reversal and no published record of any of it. Nothing in the reserve or the attestation changed; the CUSIP schedule was re-read position by position and every figure reproduced.
Self-identify in 10 seconds

Which one is actually for you?

GHO (Aave)

Choose GHO (Aave) if seizure and upgrade authority matters most

  • Seizure and upgrade authority: 6/10 against 5/10 for Ripple USD (RLUSD) (weight 18)
Ripple USD (RLUSD)Leads

Choose Ripple USD (RLUSD) if counterparty and insolvency rank matters most

  • Counterparty and insolvency rank: 5/10 against 1/10 for GHO (Aave) (weight 30)
  • Redemption right exercised: 5/10 against 3/10 for GHO (Aave) (weight 28)
  • Reserve and assurance scope: 8/10 against 2/10 for GHO (Aave) (weight 24)
Criterion by criterion

Scorecard

Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology

Counterparty and insolvency rank

by 4 of 10weight 7.2 of 86Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads
GHO (Aave)1 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)5 out of 10

Redemption right exercised

by 2 of 10weight 6.7 of 86Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads
GHO (Aave)3 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)5 out of 10

Reserve and assurance scope

by 6 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads
GHO (Aave)2 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)8 out of 10

Seizure and upgrade authority

by 1 of 10weight 4.3 of 86GHO (Aave) leads
GHO (Aave)6 out of 10
Ripple USD (RLUSD)5 out of 10

Score dimensions

weights sum to 86

The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.

Availabilityweight 20 of 86 · constant here
GHO (Aave)14/20Ripple USD (RLUSD)14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
GHO (Aave)6.5/30Ripple USD (RLUSD)13.7/30
Ripple USD (RLUSD) leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
GHO (Aave)2.7/10Ripple USD (RLUSD)2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
GHO (Aave)3.2/8Ripple USD (RLUSD)3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
GHO (Aave)8.3/18Ripple USD (RLUSD)8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order

Choose Ripple USD (RLUSD) unless the term GHO (Aave) leads on is the one you are buying.

Pick GHO (Aave) if seizure and upgrade authority matters most — it scores 6/10 to Ripple USD (RLUSD)'s 5/10 there (weight 18).

The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .

From the published order

Next best action

If this isn't your case

Other matchups worth comparing

How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
  • Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
    Scored by Who can freeze, burn or replace your balance — and have they? · 18% (GHO (Aave) 6/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 5/10)
  • Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
    Scored by Who exactly owes you the dollar, and where do you rank when they fail? · 30% (GHO (Aave) 1/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 5/10)
    Scored by What is really behind it, and what did the third party actually opine on? · 24% (GHO (Aave) 2/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 8/10)
  • Exit failure: you cannot get out at par, on time, or with what is yours.
    Scored by Can the person actually holding it get a dollar back at par — and has anyone, at size? · 28% (GHO (Aave) 3/10, Ripple USD (RLUSD) 5/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Custody failure, Regulatory failure, Information failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Questions

Frequently asked questions

Ripple USD (RLUSD) scores 19 points above GHO (Aave), led by counterparty and insolvency rank, redemption right exercised, and reserve and assurance scope. Published scores, out of 100: GHO (Aave) 56 (rank 8 of 11 stablecoins), Ripple USD (RLUSD) 75 (rank 3 of 11).

Related pages

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Written and reviewed by Founder
Reviewed Next review by Methodology v2026.10.18
How this page is reviewed

Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.

Accountable for this review: Mathias Siemonsmeier, Founder.

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