In a rare burst of real-time brainstorming on X, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz dropped two potential upgrades to how blockchain networks – particularly the XRP Ledger – could manage transaction fees. The conversation, which drew input from developers, users and protocol theorists, revolved around improving fairness and efficiency without compromising consensus or performance.
Currently, XRP Ledger fees are dynamic but non-refundable – you pay to get in, and whatever you offer above the required minimum is burned, even if it was not necessary. This has raised ongoing questions about overpayment, fairness and incentive design.
Schwartz’s first proposal suggests calculating the actual fee needed to get one more transaction into the ledger after consensus is reached. Any user who paid more than that would receive a rebate for the difference. This approach would preserve incentive alignment while ensuring users are not penalized for honestly bidding higher to guarantee inclusion.
One idea is to compute the fee level required to get one more transaction into the ledger after the consensus transaction set is determined and rebate any fee above that level that any transaction tried to pay. You might have to tweak that a bit to make it not break consensus.
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) June 16, 2025
However, Schwartz noted the challenge: getting all validators to agree on that post-consensus threshold without risking divergence. He believes it is solvable with some protocol-level tweaks, but it would not be trivial.
Nothing is ever ideal
His second idea is to just calculate the median fee of all the accepted transactions per ledger and refund anything paid above that. It is easier to put into practice, but it could still result in overpayment if everyone puts in the most they are willing to pay.
“Everyone overpays. That’s not ideal,” Schwartz wrote. The idea is to let users reveal their maximum price without having to guess the minimum, and without losing money for being honest.
There is not an official roadmap for implementing either system yet, but the open discussion shows that Ripple’s leadership is actively looking into better fee models.