Key facts
- 793 accounts accounted for 93.2% of XRP Ledger transactions in August 2026, according to Bitquery.
- Less than 1% of XRP Ledger traffic was attributed to real human payments after removing bot activity.
- Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz defended the network, stating low transaction costs are not a liability.
- XRP critic Scam Daddy described the XRP Ledger as a 'ghost chain' due to concentrated bot activity.
- The xrpld 3.3.0 Permission Delegation amendment is advancing towards validator voting.
The XRP Ledger (XRPL) is facing criticism regarding the distribution of its network transactions, with a study by Bitquery revealing that 793 accounts were responsible for over 93% of activity in August 2026. This concentration of activity led XRP critic Scam Daddy to label the blockchain a "Ghost chain," suggesting it is dominated by bots and spammers rather than genuine human-scale payments.
According to the Bitquery data, these 793 accounts handled 93.2% of all transactions. The report further indicated that after filtering out machine-driven activity and spam, only 0.8% of the ledger's traffic represented "real, human-scale payments." Additionally, nearly half of the active accounts on the ledger had only made a single transaction.
David Schwartz, Ripple CTO Emeritus, pushed back against the criticism, questioning the premise that higher transaction costs would inherently improve the network. He stated, "If it were more expensive and fewer people did low-value things on it, would that somehow make it better?" Scam Daddy later clarified his stance, stating he was merely highlighting the usage breakdown.
Pro-XRP lawyer Bill Morgan also defended the ledger, characterizing the "ghost chain" label as a "rhetorical attack" that uses a slogan rather than a measurable metric. He suggested that critics overlook payment and tokenization traffic, focusing instead on concentrated bot or exchange activity. Morgan argued that such labels persuade through insult rather than by measuring actual value movement and recording.
Meanwhile, development on the XRP Ledger continues, with the xrpld 3.3.0 Permission Delegation amendment progressing towards validator voting. This feature aims to enable role-based permissions for institutions, allowing them to delegate operational functions without exposing master wallet keys. XRPL validator Vet has publicly supported the amendment, calling it a "critical feature."