David Schwartz, Ripple CTO, has confirmed that the company’s decision to lower the XRP Ledger (XRPL) account reserve fees will unlock more XRP accounts. This move comes as the blockchain supporting the XRP token continues to evolve, looking to improve the user experience and promote wider adoption of cryptocurrency.
Earlier in December, the XRPL account reserve was lowered by the community to promote adoption. Schwartz, who is one of the key architects of XRPL, has suggested several ways to ensure better stability and predictability for users. This is part of the ongoing process of evaluating and adjusting the XRPL account reserve.
In an X post on December 17, Schwartz proposed changes to the XRPL account reserve voting process. The XRPL account reserve is the amount of XRP a user needs to activate an account on the XRPL and hold objects like NFTs. This system prevents network spamming by malicious users. The account reserve is determined by a fee voting process carried out by validators, who can set a preferred account reserve parameter every 15 minutes. The network then adjusts to the median of the trusted validators’ settings.
However, Schwartz has identified a problem with this process. Validators need to be active to change their preferences. If validators are inactive, votes may be too close, causing the network to fluctuate between two reserve levels, thereby negatively impacting the user experience. To solve this problem, Schwartz has suggested that the fee voting configuration should have a default “off” setting. This would make voting by validators more deliberate. He also proposed that the default setting should not favor lowering or increasing the reserve unless the validator explicitly decides to make a change.
Schwartz also shared his thoughts on the recent reduction in the account reserve parameter. On December 2, the base reserve was adjusted from 10 XRP to 1 XRP and the ownership reserve was lowered from 2 XRP to 0.2 XRP. While Schwartz believes this change was long overdue, he thinks the reduction might have been more aggressive than necessary. There are concerns that the network could be vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks if the account reserve fee becomes too low. Moreover, raising account reserves later would mean locking up XRP that users previously had access to, which could lead to concerns about excessive control over their holdings.
In light of these potential risks, Schwartz called for a cautious and thoughtful approach to future changes as the network continues to evolve and adapt to user needs.
