Ripple promotes compliant innovation in Japan, but why has on-chain activity decreased by 50%?

【Crypto World】A well-known blockchain project recently launched an interesting startup acceleration program in Japan. In simple terms, it provides funding—$10,000 per project—to teams developing compliant digital financial solutions on the project’s chain, covering practical applications like stablecoins and asset tokenization.

Supporting this initiative are major Japanese institutions—players like Mizuho Bank and SMBC Nikko Securities are backing it. The logic is clear: leveraging Japan’s relatively clear regulatory framework to promote local adoption and implementation of their ecosystem.

However, there’s an interesting phenomenon here. Data shows that the total value locked (TVL) on this project chain has been declining from its peak in July, now down to approximately $62 million—a nearly 50% shrinkage.

This creates a contradictory picture: on one side, institutional partnerships are expanding; on the other, on-chain DeFi activity continues to decline. It seems that B2B (institutional) actions are quite active, but actual user (C-end) participation appears to be shrinking. This mismatch is quite common across the entire Web3 ecosystem—project funding and partnership news are everywhere, but actual usage data is telling a different story.