David Schwartz, CTO of Ripple and one of the main people behind XRP Ledger (XRPL), recently spoke about some concerns the XRP community has been having about the need for XRP to facilitate transactions on the ledger. These concerns came up as Ripple prepares for the launch of RLUSD, a stablecoin that the company introduced to expand its service offerings. With the upcoming deployment, some people started wondering if XRP was still needed on XRPL.
Schwartz explained why XRP is still needed in the infrastructure, pointing out that it is particularly important for keeping the network safe from spam attacks. He explained that public ledgers like XRP Ledger need a scarce asset to make sure only legitimate transactions are processed.
If XRP were not a mandatory part of every transaction, XRPL would be at risk of being flooded with too many requests, which could make the ledger unstable.
For a public ledger to resist spam attacks, you need something scarce to fund a transaction so an attacker can’t drown the system with infinite garbage. XRPL only uses XRP for this purpose. Unless rules change, nothing can move on XRPL without XRP.
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 27, 2024
This shows that, unless the rules for XRPL are changed, XRP will still be needed for all transactions on the ledger. Schwartz’s comments give a clear answer about XRP’s central role, which makes it clear that the doubts that came up because of RLUSD are wrong. The stablecoin is a new thing for Ripple, but it does not replace or reduce XRP’s role on the XRPL.
The community had some valid concerns about the recent expansion, but this clarification of XRP’s irreplaceable function puts those worries to rest. Schwartz’s comments show that XRP is still at the heart of XRPL’s operations, even though other assets like RLUSD get added too.
