On October 5, 2026, Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz pushed back against blockchain fee revenue rankings, arguing that higher transaction charges overlook the interests of paying users. In a response on X, Schwartz said fee revenue measures transaction friction that a blockchain has failed to remove for users.
The discussion began after an X user proposed raising the XRP Ledger base fee by tenfold or even one hundredfold to accelerate XRP burning. According to XRPscan figures cited in the exchange, the XRP Ledger has burned 14,403,762 XRP since inception, representing approximately 0.014% of the original 100 billion XRP supply. The user argued that even with such an increase, transactions would remain below one cent while removing more XRP from circulation.
The XRP Ledger charges transaction fees that are a fraction of a cent, and its burn mechanism permanently destroys those tokens. Unlike blockchains that reward validators through transaction fees, XRP Ledger removes the XRP users spend to process transactions. That means fees represent permanent supply reduction rather than income distributed to validator operators.
Schwartz challenged the emphasis on fee totals, questioning whose interests such rankings serve. He highlighted the financial burden that higher charges place on blockchain users and defended low transaction costs. The exchange contrasted the proposal for faster XRP burning with Schwartz’s argument that fee revenue overlooks costs borne by users.
