The native cryptocurrency of the XRP Ledger is XRP.
The XRP Ledger is a distributed ledger designed for fast settlement, payments, and exchanging different currencies or issued tokens. XRP is built into the ledger itself, unlike user-issued assets that can represent currencies, commodities, or other units of value.
Development began in 2011 with David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto, and the ledger was formally established in 2012. XRP was created with a supply of 100 billion units at inception and was not mined through Bitcoin-style proof of work.
A frequent mix-up is treating Ripple and XRP as interchangeable. Ripple is a company that helped develop and promote products using the ledger, while XRP is the digital asset and the XRP Ledger is the underlying open-source network. XLM, XMR, and XDC are separate cryptocurrencies on different networks.