A technical dispute within the XRP community came to public attention this week, when Ripple CTO Emeritus David “JoelKatz” Schwartz responded to criticism regarding Xaman Wallet fees and a contentious nested multisignature configuration on the XRP Ledger.
The dispute began with social media posts claiming that using Xaman could be more expensive than transacting on Ethereum for small amounts, and with accusations that users had been charged unexpectedly high service fees on XRPL’s native decentralized exchange. A widely shared screenshot alleged a service charge of 659 XRP, far above the network’s base fee of 0.000012 XRP, and suggested that this discrepancy was the result of hidden fee routing.
Schwartz distances himself from third-party wallet issues
Schwartz joined the conversation after being tagged directly, replying, “What did I do?” — a brief response indicating his distance from the operational decisions of third-party wallet providers, while acknowledging the intensity of community concern.
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The debate extends beyond fees. Critics pointed to Xaman’s use of ‘nested’ multisignature setups under XLS-103d, arguing that such configurations could lock users out of their accounts or introduce hidden approval paths.
In response, Xaman and XRPL developer Wietse Wind provided a detailed explanation of a real-world case in which a user had unintentionally created an unresolvable nested multisig structure, thereby freezing access to their funds. Wind stated that the issue was not a backdoor, but rather a configuration permitted by the ledger that required a formal protocol amendment to resolve.
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An amendment proposal has since been submitted to the XRPL codebase to allow nested signatures in a recoverable form, pending validator review and voting. This process highlights a fundamental difference: XRPL protocol rules are enforced by validators, not by Ripple or wallet vendors, and changes require network consensus.
