XRPL Labs Founder Aims to Slash XRP Account Reserve Fee by 90% to Boost Accessibility

• Wind argues that the current reserve requirement creates a barrier for new users and projects on XRPL, suggesting that businesses could sponsor the 1 XRP reserve as an onboarding cost.
• Alongside the reserve reduction, Wind supports increasing transaction fees from 10 to 200 drops to deter spam transactions and proposes lowering the object reserve for trust lines and escrows from 2 XRP to 0.2 XRP.

Wietse Wind, the founder of the Xaman development team for XRPL Labs, has called for a reduction in the XRP Ledger’s account reserve fee. Wind took to X to advocate for lowering the current 10 XRP reserve to just 1 XRP. This decrease will help in improving accessibility for users.

In his post, Wind highlighted the difficulty in quantifying how many potential users are discouraged by the reserve requirement. He stated, “It’s impossible to quantify the amount of users being scared off by a 2 or 5 or 10 XRP reserve. We don’t know who these users are, what they will come for… and where they live (geography influences purchasing power).” 

XRPL Reserve Decrease Proposal

With the reduction of the reserve to 1 XRP, Wind believes it would encourage projects and businesses to sponsor the reserve as an onboarding cost. This would, in turn, make it easier for new users to participate in the XRPL ecosystem.

Currently, the XRPL mandates that users maintain a reserve of 10 XRP in their accounts, which remains locked as long as the account is active. This requirement was to prevent the ledger from being overwhelmed by spam or inactive accounts, reported CNF. 

However, Wind and others in the community argue that this reserve also creates a barrier to entry for new users and projects in areas with limited purchasing power. Last year, XRPL protocol SpendTheBits raised a similar concern, which prompted Ripple CTO David Schwartz to engage in the discussion.

Wind emphasized the importance of a 1 XRP reserve, noting that businesses such as Xaman Wallet (previously Xumm) could easily sponsor this amount for new users, as reported by CNF. On X, he wrote, “1 XRP is an amount a project can consider sponsoring: by just giving it away. By factoring it in as an onboarding cost of new users.” This would simplify the onboarding process.

However, Wind acknowledged the potential challenges of reducing the reserve. He also admitted that it could lead to increased activity on the ledger. Nevertheless, he sees this as a manageable problem.

He stated that the XRP community is ready to handle the infrastructure demands of higher network usage, whether through hardware improvements, configuration optimizations, or scaling efforts. According to Wind, increased usage would ultimately be a positive development for the network.

Other Proposed Changes

Wind also mentioned other proposed changes in his recent post. He revealed that XRPL Labs’ validator supports a reduction in the account reserve, as well as a proposed increase in transaction fees to counter spam transactions. Specifically, transaction fees would increase from 10 drops (a fraction of an XRP) to 200 drops.

Despite the fee hike, transactions would still remain affordable, though slightly more expensive. This move aims to deter spam activity on the network. Additionally, Wind suggested lowering the object reserve, which refers to the amount of XRP held for items like trust lines and escrows within XRPL accounts. Last week, ripple also launched its innovative crypto custody solution with the XRPLedger, per the CNF report.  

He proposed reducing this from the current 2 XRP to 0.2 XRP. This adjustment would further ease the financial burden on users and projects that operate on XRPL.