• Ripple CTO, David Schwartz, has reiterated his belief that a reserve fee should be imposed on new accounts on the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
• Part of the XRP community is concerned that this could negatively impact the adoption of the ledger.

A fierce dispute is ongoing in the XRP community over the imposition of a reserve fee on new accounts of the XRP Ledger (XRPL). The issue was highlighted by the official X account of SpendTheBits, a cryptocurrency wallet building on XRPL. The team prompted the community to share their views on the 10 XRP reserve fee for activating XRPL accounts.

The X account is proposing a new fee and prompts the XRP community to vote on this. While some are in support of this fee, some advocate for a zero XRP activation fee, to bolster the adoption of the ledger. However, crypto researcher Anderson has cautioned against this, warning it could lead to spamming.

With 1,000 votes cast at the time of press, around 56 percent have voted for a 1 XRP free, 22.8 percent have voted for a zero activation fee and 22.7 percent have voted for 1 USD. Of note, there are still more than 10 hours remaining with the post beginning to gather mass recognition in the community.

With a zero activation fee likely to bolster mass adoption, the SpendTheBits account has questioned how other blockchains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cardano are able to prevent spam without an activation fee. Ripple CTO David Schwartz responded to this, explaining that there is a difference in design. He wrote;

Either their accounts are not as heavy as XRPL’s or they charge the fees in some other way. For example, most ethereum chains charge you when you store data. An XRPL account reserve gives you an account, an owner directory, and two other objects.

The CTO further explained that the fee isn’t really charged and goes to pay transaction fees which can be recovered by removing objects and even removing the account. This was the case back in June when Poloniex deleted over 85,000 XRP accounts, recovering around $1.5 million in fees.

XRPL consultant Chris shared his views, first acknowledging that the activation fee was critical to prevent spam. In his view, the Decentralized IDs (DIDs) standard could be the solution. This would allow for the scrapping of the activation fee while protecting the ledger from spam. Notably, a proposal dubbed, XLS-40D, went live in May, seeking to introduce decentralized identities to the XRP Ledger.

Schwartz is however not entirely convinced with this approach, noting “Anyone can issue any number of DIDs to anyone. The ledger has no idea whether a DID proves that you’re a unique human being or not. There are really no good decentralized ways of proving you’re a unique human known yet. That’s why Worldcoin does what it does.”

While the ongoing debate will not bring immediate changes, it could bring a broader understanding or change in the workings of the ledger in the future.

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