Ripple CTO Reacts to XRP Fee Hike Proposal

The XRP community is in a heated debate over the proposal to increase transaction fees to boost the price of the controversial token.

The discussion started when Twitter user @Kneteknilch suggested an amendment to increase transaction fees in proportion to the value of transactions to boost XRP’s value.

David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technical officer, responded to the proposal, stating that he agrees that transaction fees should reflect the actual cost a transaction imposes on the network.

However, the architect behind the XRP Ledger disagreed with the notion of using transaction fee destruction as an artificial mechanism to put upward pressure on XRP’s price.

Schwartz further explained that the advantage of the XRPL is low-cost, high-speed transaction confirmation. Still, he believes that node operators should not subsidize transactions whose value is less than their total cost.

According to Schwartz, if the transaction fee is less than the actual cost of a transaction, executing the transaction could destroy value and discourage people from running nodes. In contrast, if the fee is more than the cost, there would be needless friction.

Twitter user Chris Thompson joined the discussion, suggesting that the fee would need to be large enough to discourage a particular transaction. He questioned whether introducing a heavy transaction type was necessary to discourage its use.

Schwartz responded, stating that the XRP Ledger already has a better solution to this issue. If the transaction is out of the node’s capability, the node can simply flag it off, preventing its execution.

Overall, the XRPL community is divided on the proposal to increase transaction fees to boost XRP’s price.

The discussion is ongoing, and it remains to be seen whether any amendments to the XRPL transaction fee structure will be made.