As debate grows over the XRP Ledger (XRPL) burn mechanism, a community expert drew attention by publishing calculations showing it would take about 2 years to burn 1 million XRP if XRPL continuously processes 1,500 transactions per second.

The Crypto Basic, a blockchain outlet, reported on Jan. 3 that a community member, Andy, shared the analysis in response to remarks by Jake Claver, CEO of Digital Ascension Group.

Andy initially said that, assuming XRPL processes 1,500 transactions per second without pause, burning 1 million XRP could take up to 21 years. He later revised the figure after reviewing the burn fee per transaction.

He calculated that 1 drop (0.000001 XRP) is burned per transaction, and described that pace as 1 XRP every 11 minutes and 10 XRP every 1.8 hours. The analysis contained a critical error because the actual XRPL transaction fee burn rate is not 0.000001 XRP but 0.00001 XRP (10 drops). On that basis, the number of transactions needed to burn 1 XRP falls to 100,000, and if 1,500 transactions per second continue, 1 XRP is burned about every 1.11 minutes. At that pace, the network would burn 10 XRP in 11 minutes and 100 XRP in 1 hour 51 minutes, and it would take about 2.11 years to burn 1 million XRP. That is a big difference from the initial estimate of 21 years.

The discussion also led to the issue of XRPL scalability. Claver said that while XRPL’s current processing speed is impressive, it is not sufficient for large-scale adoption as a global payments network. He said additional scaling solutions such as subnets and payment channels are needed, and has also mentioned the possibility of raising TPS, or transactions per second, to about 3,400 in the future.

Despite the revised figures, some in the community still say the XRP burn pace is slower than expected. The prevailing view is that this outcome was expected because XRPL’s burn mechanism was not designed to strengthen scarcity but as a means to prevent network spam. Since its launch, XRPL has burned about 14,267,000 XRP alongside growth in transactions.

Andy also agreed that the main driver of a rise in XRP’s price is likely to be ETF approval and expanding institutional demand rather than the burn effect, drawing a line under the burn debate.