The XRPL Labs founder and Ripple’s CTO have responded to a complaint regarding an unusually high 10,000 XRP fee from Xaman.
Notably, Clint Boerner, co-founder and CTO of Ark Institute, recently raised alarm over what appeared to be an exorbitant transaction fee from Xaman Wallet (formerly Xumm). According to Boerner, during an attempt to swap PLR tokens for XRP, his wallet encountered a service fee request of 10,000 XRP, roughly equivalent to $21,000.
He expressed concerns publicly, pointing out the concerning nature of the issue although the transaction failed due to insufficient balance. Boerner argued that had the wallet contained the required amount, the system might have deducted the fee without warning.
Speaking further, he shared that a different transaction executed from another wallet, even with a Xaman Pro subscription, also incurred a small standard fee of 0.09 XRP, noting that he was still awaiting a response from Xaman’s support team on the matter.
XRPL Labs Founder and Ripple CTO Respond
Wietse Wind, the founder of XRPL Labs, the team behind Xaman, responded to Boerner’s concerns. Wind clarified that what appeared to be a 10,000 XRP fee was a safeguard mechanism that deliberately sets an impossible requirement to ensure the transaction does not proceed.
The origin TX was a payload signing for an exchange for 100bn XRP. So the hard cap triggered.
1. We changed the backend to ignore such crazy payloads crafted by third party devs to exchange something for 100bn XRP
2. It never went through
3. We would have refunded
4. Fixed
— WietseWind (🪝🛠 @ Xaman®, XRPL & Xahau) (@WietseWind) May 3, 2025
According to Wind, the transaction in question originated from a payload signing event tied to an attempted exchange for a staggering 100 billion XRP. He explained that this extraordinary value triggered a hard cap within the backend of the system.
Wind assured the community that they had since updated the backend to prevent such extreme payloads from third-party developers.
He confirmed that the transaction never completed and affirmed that had it gone through, the development team would have refunded the amount. In his statement, Wind confirmed that they had resolved the bug and fully addressed the issue.
Meanwhile, some community members brought the issue to Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz. When asked for his opinion, Schwartz dismissed the incident as a edge case that had slipped past earlier iterations of the code. He noted that the XRPL Labs team had fixed issue.
There's no mystery here. It's a weird edge case that the code was not designed to handle. It's been fixed.
— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) May 4, 2025
Additional Context
Reacting directly to Boerner’s claim, Denis Angell, a software engineer at XRPL Labs, explained that the system calculates swap fees based on the amount of XRP involved in the transaction. According to him, in this peculiar instance, the request involved 100 million XRP, which resulted in the inflated fee estimate.
Swap fees are charged based on the XRP Amount. In this case that amount was some random 100 million XRP.
All of the verified swap providers in Xaman use exchange rates. You will never encounter this if you use the Swap feature in Xaman.
— Denis Angell 🎩 (@angell_denis) May 3, 2025
Angell reassured users that all verified swap providers within Xaman use exchange rate-based calculations, which inherently safeguard users from encountering such edge cases when using the built-in Swap feature.
Meanwhile, Danella Draper, a Web3 consultant and blockchain educator, suggested users should be mindful when interpreting the situation. Draper suggested that Boerner may have inadvertently attempted to execute a transaction equivalent to the entire ledger in one go.
She stressed it was important to consider the technical context fully before making public claims, warning that such misunderstandings could undermine the reputation of a platform like Xaman that has reliably served the XRP Ledger for years.
DisClamier: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
