Here’s How Long It Would Take XRPL to Burn 1M XRP if the Ledger Processed 1,500 Txns Per Second

A community pundit has assessed how long it would take for the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to burn 1 million XRP if it constantly processed 1,500 transactions per second.

Andy, a community member, presented this assessment while speaking on a recent commentary from Digital Ascension Group CEO Jake Claver. Based on his evaluation, it would take up to 21 years for the XRPL to burn 1 million XRP if it processed 1,500 transactions every second non-stop. However, accurate figures put it at 2.1 years.

XRPL Would Need to Scale to Match Global Demands

For context, Claver recently called attention to the XRP Ledger’s scalability capacity. According to him, the XRPL, in its current form, processes about 1,500 transactions per second. This referenced figures from official disclosures. However, while this remains impressive, Claver believes it is insufficient to support true global transaction volumes

He explained that achieving full-scale adoption will demand additional scaling solutions, especially technologies such as subnets or payment channels, as necessary next steps. Claver added that he already has an idea of how these solutions could emerge. Notably, previous reports suggested an increase in the TPS to 3,400.

The XRPL Burn Feature

According to Andy, even if the XRPL does process 1,500 transactions every second consistently, it would only burn 0.0015 XRP tokens per second, considering a burn rate of 1 drop (or 0.000001 XRP) per transaction. Notably, this translates to 1 XRP burned in 11 minutes, and 10 XRP tokens incinerated every 1.8 hours. Essentially, at this pace, it would take 21 years to burn 1 million XRP.

How Long Would It Take to Burn 1M XRP

However, his assessment had a single detail wrong: the burn rate per transaction. Specifically, the XRPL burns 0.00001 XRP (or 10 drops) per transaction, not 0.000001. With this, it would take 100,000 transactions to burn 1 whole XRP token. As a result, if the XRPL consistently processed 1,500 transactions each second, it would require 1.11 minutes to burn 1 XRP.

At this rate, the XRP Ledger would burn 10 XRP in 11 minutes, and 100 XRP within 1 hour, 51 minutes. Essentially, it would take the network 2.11 years to actually burn 1 million XRP, not 21 years. Notably, at the correct pace, the XRPL would have burned 9.95 million XRP tokens in 21 years. Since its launch, the XRPL has burned 14.267 million XRP due to certain surges in transaction count and cost.