XRPL community remains divided on the proposal to raise transaction fees

• The Ripple XRP community is engaged in a heated debate over a proposal to raise transaction fees on the XRP Ledger.
• Ripple CTO stated he did not want the network to lose its competitive advantage as a low-cost, high-speed transaction blockchain.

The Ripple XRP community on Twitter has been engaged in a heated debate over a proposal to raise transaction fees on the XRP Ledger in order to boost the price of the token.

Ripple Chief Technology Officer (CTO) David Schwartz has also weighed in on the proposal.

Schwartz expressed his thoughts in a series of tweets yesterday (5 March), explaining his viewpoint.

He stated that, while he voted yes in the poll, he did not believe that transaction fees should be used to artificially manipulate the price of XRP.

However, he admitted that transaction costs should reflect the actual cost imposed on the network in order to allow for more efficient resource allocation.

Schwartz also stated that he did not want the network to lose its competitive advantage as a low-cost, high-speed transaction blockchain. Nonetheless, he stated that he did not want node operators to subsidize transaction fees as well.

“My thinking is that if the txn fee is less than the actual cost of a txn, then we’ll be destroying value by executing txns and discouraging people from running nodes,” Schwartz surmised. “Whereas if the fee is more than the cost, we’re adding needless friction,” he added.

Due to its low transaction costs and speed, the XRPL is popular in payments. The average network transaction costs less than $0.01 and takes 3-5 seconds to complete.

Will the step benefit node operators?

The XRP Ledger architect, however, disagreed with the idea of using transaction fee destruction as an artificial mechanism to drive up the price of XRP.

On the other hand, Chris Thompson, a Twitter user, chimed in, suggesting that “the fee would need to be large enough to discourage that particular transaction.” He questioned whether a heavy transaction type was required to discourage its use.

Thompson also questioned, “The node operator does not get any of the fees anyway, so why does it matter if the fee matches the cost of the transaction?”

In response, Schwartz stated that the XRP Ledger already has a better solution to this problem. If the transaction is beyond the node’s capabilities, it can simply flag it. This way, the transaction can be prevented from being executed.

In conclusion, the XRPL community remains divided on the proposal to raise transaction fees in order to boost the price of XRP.