How much would the XRP price have grown by 2035 if the XRP Ledger (XRPL) introduced a fee-burning mechanism like Ethereum’s EIP-1559?

For context, the XRPL already destroys a small amount of XRP with each transaction, but this feature only exists to prevent spam, not to generate revenue or reduce supply over time. 

However, Ethereum took a very different route. When it introduced its Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559 (EIP-1559), the upgrade made transaction fees more predictable and also gave Ethereum a deflationary trend by permanently removing part of its tokens from circulation.

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Ethereum’s EIP-1559

Notably, EIP-1559 went live in August 2021, as part of Ethereum’s London Hard Fork, and completely changed how users pay gas fees. The system now includes three main parts: a base fee, a priority fee (often called a tip), and a fee cap. 

Specifically, the network calculates the base fee automatically depending on congestion and then burns that amount instead of sending it to miners. However, users can add a small tip to speed up their transactions, while the fee cap ensures they never pay more than they choose.

This structure made fees more stable and fair while also turning ETH into a potentially deflationary asset. Since the Merge, Ethereum has seen both inflationary and deflationary periods depending on activity across the network.

Interestingly, this deflationary model has triggered questions about how XRP could perform if it adopted a similar approach. 

XRP Price if XRPL Employed a Similar Approach

Since its launch in 2012, the XRPL has burned just 14.2 million tokens, valued at about $36 million. By contrast, since Ethereum implemented EIP-1559 in August 2021, it has destroyed roughly 4.621 million ETH in just over four years, according to ultrasound.money. This equals about $18.48 billion, or an average of $4.4 billion burned each year.

If the XRPL introduced the same type of mechanism, fees would likely rise, but the burn rate would climb as well. The $4.4 billion annual burns would push the network to destroy around $44 billion worth of XRP over the next decade. 

At XRP’s current price of $2.56, this translates to about 17.187 billion tokens removed from circulation. However, the major question is how this change would actually influence XRP’s price in the long run. To explore this, we asked Google Gemini for an evaluation.

According to Gemini, burning $4.4 billion worth of tokens each year would come as a result of enormous activity on the XRPL. To sustain that level, XRP would need massive global adoption and utility, likely driving institutions and investors toward the asset.

In its bullish scenario, Gemini projected that XRP’s market cap could reach between $3 trillion and $5 trillion within a decade. Using the upper estimate of $5 trillion and assuming about 37.813 billion XRP remain after ten years of burning, Gemini calculated that XRP could trade around $132.23 by 2035.

Gemini added that such a system would not only reduce supply but also change how investors see XRP. Turning it into a deflationary asset could boost its long-term appeal. Importantly, the combination of reduced supply and growing demand could massively increase its value over time. However, the $132 price remains highly speculative.