XRP Ledger Upgrade Could Make Owning XRP Optional: Will Demand Fall?

The XRP Ledger wants to let banks pay network costs for their users. If validators agree, people could use the ledger without ever buying XRP.

Jazzi Cooper, head of product at RippleX, said the xrpld 3.3.0 release should arrive next week. It carries five proposed changes. One is called Sponsored Fees and Reserves.

Why Using the XRP Ledger Costs XRP Today

Every account on the ledger locks up 1 XRP. That amount cannot be spent or moved. Each extra item an account holds, such as a trustline, locks another 0.2 XRP.

Every transaction also burns a small fee. So a new user has to buy XRP first. Only then can they do anything else.

The upgrade changes who pays. A bank, issuer, or platform can cover both the fee and the locked amount. Users still hold their own accounts and keys.

Cooper called that requirement one of the biggest barriers for new users, and for institutional tokenization on XRPL.

“Users continue to own their accounts and keys, while removing one of the biggest onboarding hurdles: requiring every participant to acquire and manage XRP before they can interact with the network,” Cooper said.

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What It Means for XRP Demand

XRP trades near $1.06. It is down 1.3% on the day and about 64% lower than a year ago. Its market cap sits at $66.5 billion.

XRP Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto

The locked XRP does not vanish under this plan. It simply moves. Sponsors would hold it instead of millions of small users.

That cuts both ways. Everyday users lose their main reason to buy XRP. But a platform signing up thousands of accounts would need far more of it.

Past upgrades offer little guide. Permissioned Domains went live in February with more than 91% validator support. A smaller update followed in May. Neither moved the price much, and ledger use has grown while XRP fell.

2 of the 5 Changes Failed Before

Confidential MPT hides Multi-Purpose Token (MPT) balances from public view. Auditors can still check them when needed. Dynamic MPT lets issuers decide upfront which token settings they may change later.

The last two are second attempts. Batch groups up to eight transactions so they all succeed or all fail. It was pulled in February. Pranamya Keshkamat and Cantina AI’s tool Apex found a flaw that let attackers spend from other people’s accounts.

Permission Delegation was switched off in September 2025. A developer known as tequ reported that it charged fees before checking signatures. Neither ever reached the live network, so no money was lost.

Validators now decide. Each change needs 80% support for two straight weeks. Batch has been rejected once already.

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