In response to a Twitter question by user @ethanjames0394, Chief Technology Officer of Ripple David Schwartz clarified that the company would have no power to resist an 80% community consensus majority vote to burn all 50 billion XRP tokens in escrow.

User Question:

“If Nodes, validators and the community at large got together and we agree that it’s better for the community to burn the 50 billion XRP ripple has in escrows would that be possible?”

David Schwartz Response:

"Yes. There would be nothing Ripple could do to stop that from happening. Public blockchains are very democratic. If the majority wants a rules change, there is nothing the minority can do to stop them."

 

XRP Price

 Some XRP investors have shared their frustration over the past few years that Ripple have contributed to the suppression of XRP by quarterly releasing tokens from escrow to the market, drowning demand and therefore lowering price.

Ripple have 55 escrows which each hold 1 billion XRP. Each month, one of these escrows expire and return to Ripple, giving them the option to renew the escrow, or sell XRP to exchanges and clients on the market.

In November 2019, the Stellar Foundation announced they were burning 50% of the supply of XLM tokens which totalled close to 55 billion. The foundation explained to its community that this landmark decision would support the ecosystem in becoming more efficient and focused over the next decade.

After Schwartz tweeted his disapproval for the decision, co-founder of Stellar and previous Ripple employee Jed McCaleb responded with a comment similar to today’s discovery.

 

Interesting User Comments:

 User @fiikster commented on the potential repercussions if this decision ever became approved:

“The consensus majority of validators does not necessarily equate to the same consensus for the majority of the community (in effect the minority). The repercussions could be unfathomable.”

Other users such as @Vincherro1111 regards the escrow model as net-positive for the XRP ecosystem, citing the upcoming Spark airdrop by Ripple-funding start-up Flare Networks as a reason for embracing the model.

“Escrow is used to develop use cases, build liquid, make strategic investments in the #xrp ecosystem etc, which in turn benefits the community. One of the strategic investments is on @FlareNetworks & we as a community benefit from the growth if the ecosystem like the Flare Drop.”

Finally, Twitter user @librehash created an excellent thread exploring the technical aspects of Ripple’s consensus voting system and whether this mass XRP burning event is genuine possibility for the future.