Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz has challenged the idea that fee revenue is a useful measure of blockchain performance. His criticism followed a social media suggestion to raise XRP Ledger transaction fees by 10 to 100 times so that more XRP would be burned.
Schwartz argued that revenue figures leave out the cost paid by users. A fee collected by a network is income from one perspective, but the same payment is an expense for the person making a transaction. He said judging a blockchain by the fees it collects misses that burden.
He framed higher charges as friction that a blockchain has failed to remove. Schwartz also questioned whose interests are served when fees rise, drawing a distinction between revenue for fee collectors and costs borne by users. The argument puts the effect on network participants at the center of the debate.
The proposal would not take effect by a single decision-maker. Increasing XRP Ledger fees requires consensus among validators, according to the report. Its stated aim is to increase token burns, rather than to create income for validators.
Burns and User Costs
That goal creates a trade-off described in the proposal: higher fees could increase the amount of XRP burned, while low transaction costs are intended to support adoption. Schwartz’s criticism focuses on the cost side of that choice. A larger burn does not erase the fee paid by each user who submits a transaction.
The issue is therefore not simply whether a fee increase could burn more tokens. It is also whether the resulting charge would add friction for people using the ledger. The source does not say validators have approved a change, and it presents the increase as a suggestion awaiting agreement.
Schwartz’s position challenges treating fees collected as a stand-alone sign of success. In his view, the metric should account for the burden those fees place on users. This distinction between a collector’s revenue and a user’s expense also appears in discussions of exchange trading costs, though that article addresses exchange fees rather than the XRP Ledger proposal.
The debate concerns the design of transaction costs on a blockchain, where a fee can serve as both a charge to users and a mechanism tied to token burning. The source describes the proposed increase as 10 to 100 times current fees, but does not provide a final fee schedule or a validator decision. The proposal remains conditional on consensus.
A Decision Still Requires Consensus
For now, the next step rests with XRP Ledger validators. They would need to reach consensus before the suggested increase could move forward. The source does not report that this has happened, so the proposal should not be read as an adopted change.
Schwartz’s criticism leaves the central question focused on how the network weighs greater burns against low costs for users. It also asks whether fee revenue alone can capture blockchain performance when the payment is simultaneously a user expense. That question is distinct from broader cryptocurrency policy debates and from reporting on crypto security risks.
Pluang’s report centers on the disagreement over what blockchain fees measure: income collected by a network, or friction experienced by its users. Any change to XRP Ledger fees remains dependent on validator consensus.
