XRP Ledger Sees Massive Spike in Account Deletions: Here’s Why

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XRP Ledger (XRPL), a decentralized ledger associated with Ripple, has witnessed an unprecedented increase in account deletions, marking one of the biggest spikes in its history.

The spike was primarily attributed to Poloniex, a well-known cryptocurrency exchange, which reportedly deleted approximately 15,000 old XRP accounts, resulting in the recovery of nearly 275,000 XRP tokens.

The number of deleted accounts is growing, according to Thomas Silkjær, the head of analytics and compliance at the XRP Ledger Foundation, resulting in the burning of more than 30,000 XRP in fees.

As noted by Silkjær, the cost of deleting an XRPL account equals the owner’s reserve, which stands at 2 XRP per account.

Considering Poloniex’s deletion of 15,000 accounts, the total burned in fees is substantial, and this could grow considerably, given that Poloniex is reported to have a total of 84,000 accounts. If all of these accounts are deleted, it could result in a burn of 168,000 XRP.

Surprisingly, it appears that the exchange had created individual accounts for each of its users, maintaining the minimum reserve balance for each. This outdated practice seems to have been the result of ignorance or oversight regarding the use of destination tags, a feature in XRP Ledger that allows for the efficient grouping and identification of transactions to a particular party. Poloniex seems to have since moved to a destination tag-based model.