Ripple, a San Francisco-based provider of financial settlement solutions, announced to place 55 billion XRP into a cryptographically-secured escrow account by the end of 2017, in a move to ensure certainty into total XRP supply.

Although Ripple has been engaging in distribution strategies of XRP, the native digital asset to the Ripple Consensus Ledger (RCL), in order to incentivize actions that build trust, utility and liquidity; it has heard concerns in the market about uncertainty surrounding XRP distribution. The recent announcement aims to permanently remove this uncertainty.

The secured escrow feature allows parties to secure XRP for an allotted amount of time or until specific conditions are met. Ripple will use escrow to establish 55 contracts of 1 billion XRP each that will expire on the first day of every month from months 0 to 54. These XRP will become available for Ripple’s use.

Ripple will then return whatever is unused at the end of each month to the back of the escrow queue. That is, if 500M XRP remain unspent at the end of the first month, those 500M XRP will be placed into a new escrow account set to expire in month 55.

“Within the $50 billion digital asset market, XRP has already grown tremendously in volume and market capitalization, and this pivotal development comes on the heels of Ripple’s significant customer traction with financial institutions. The lockup provides a level of predictability about XRP supply that is favorable for market demand,” Spencer Bogart, Head of Research at Blockchain Capital said.

XRP claims itself to be faster, more efficient and more scalable. Having designed for enterprise use, XRP can also be used by financial institutions for on-demand liquidity for cross-border payments.

“We partnered with Ripple because of their strength bringing financial institutions together. Ripple’s lockup of its 55 billion XRP with a cryptographic supply schedule is a clear signal that they are serious about building and maintaining a long-term, healthy ecosystem for XRP based applications,” Mike Belshe, Co-founder & CEO of Bitgo, stated.