David Schwartz pushed back against fee revenue as a measure of blockchain performance after a discussion about raising XRP Ledger transaction fees to increase XRP burns.
The discussion began with a proposal to raise XRPL’s low base fee, potentially increasing the amount of XRP burned with each transaction. The exchange highlights a broader question for the ledger: should it prioritize higher fee revenue and token burns, or maintain near-zero costs to support payments and tokenization?
However, XRPL handles fees differently from networks where transaction charges are paid to validators. The XRP used for transaction fees is burned, permanently removing it from circulation.
Schwartz challenged the premise that higher fee revenue necessarily measures a blockchain’s performance.
He then highlighted the different interests of those collecting fees and those paying them. While fee collectors benefit from revenue, he questioned how that perspective accounts for users’ costs.
“But what about the people who pay the fees? Who cares about their interests?” Schwartz asked.
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});The exchange ultimately raises a question about what matters more for XRPL adoption: increasing XRP burns and improving fee-based metrics, or maintaining the low transaction costs that support payments and tokenization.
For XRPL, the debate is therefore not simply about how much XRP can be burned. It is about whether higher fees would strengthen the network’s perceived value or undermine one of its core advantages: inexpensive transactions.
