Xaman’s 0.8% Fee Debate: Who Really Pays for XRPL?

Xaman Wallet charges a 0.8% trading fee to fund XRPL infrastructure, while free alternatives exist. Here’s why that distinction matters more than you think.

Xaman Wallet charges a 0.8% trading fee. The XRP community noticed. Some pushed back hard. But the fee is for Xaman’s software layer, not the XRP Ledger itself. That distinction has been buried under weeks of noise.

The XRP Ledger network fee sits at 0.00001 XRP. Ten drops. At any realistic XRP price, that rounds to nearly nothing. Nobody at XRPL Labs raised that number. Nobody touched the protocol.

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The Fee Nobody Actually Changed

Jungleincxrp, posting on X, laid it out plainly. Ripple builds software on the open-source XRP Ledger. No one demands Ripple give that away free. XRPL Labs does the same thing, and somehow that became controversial. The fee pays for software, servers, engineers, and ongoing maintenance. Not for ledger access.

XRPL validators earn zero block rewards. No mining yield. No staking returns. The people running nodes do it voluntarily, out of pocket. XRPL Labs has been quietly subsidizing a significant share of user-facing infrastructure for years.

That cost goes somewhere. The 0.8% fee is part of where it goes.

Infrastructure Runs on Something

A full history node on the XRPL requires roughly 17 terabytes of high-speed NVMe SSD storage as of 2026, according to jungleincxrp on X. That grows by approximately 12 gigabytes every single day. Hardware, bandwidth, and engineers who know how to run it. None of that is free.

MetaMask generated somewhere near $150 million in annual revenue at its peak. XRPL Labs operates on a fraction of that. A company that cannot cover its costs does not survive a bear market. And if XRPL Labs goes down, the most-used gateway to the entire ledger goes with it.

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The Model Shifted in January

On January 30, 2026, Xaman began sunsetting its Pro subscription. The company moved to usage-based fees. Pay when you use a service, not a flat monthly rate for access you may never touch. That is a more honest model, not a punitive one.

XRPL_Commons, posting on X, pointed to something the broader debate keeps sidestepping. Users can choose whichever option fits them. Use Xaman, use another app, or send directly to the ledger. Diversity in paying and non-paying options is what keeps the XRPL functioning. Nobody is forced onto Xaman. Free alternatives exist on the same open ledger.

The outrage assumes wallet software should operate outside normal business economics. Internet pipes don’t charge per data packet. Netflix still charges. Nobody calls that a betrayal of the internet. The protocol and the service layer are two separate things.

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Xaman’s Fees Against the Benchmark

Jungleincxrp noted on X that Xaman’s fees sit lower than or comparable to MetaMask’s. Ethereum users understand the difference between protocol costs and software layer costs. That clarity is what XRPL’s community has been missing in this debate. Nobody screams about MetaMask ruining Ethereum.

The deeper assumption driving the complaints, the one left mostly unsaid, is that software built on a cheap network should itself cost nothing. That logic falls apart the moment you apply it anywhere else. A mechanic does not offer free labor because gasoline is cheap.

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Real builders need real revenue. The XRPL protocol remains as cheap as it has ever been. Xaman is simply trying to stay in business while running the infrastructure; a lot of that cheap network traffic depends on whether the community recognizes that before the next bear market may determine more than just one wallet’s future.