The XRP Ledger (XRPL) community was recently rocked by the burn of a significant number of DROP tokens on the network, sparking a flurry of speculation among enthusiasts. XRPScan, an XRPL explorer, recorded the transaction on October 18, 2024, at 06:56 UTC, which saw 10,000 DROP tokens incinerated. The transaction incurred a fee of 0.000012 XRP.
Despite the transaction taking place earlier in the month, it only came to the broader XRP community’s attention following a tweet by XRPScan. The explorer humorously urged the community to hold a “moment of silence” for the considerable transaction.
The unexpected burn of the DROP tokens sparked a lively debate among the XRP community, with many speculating whether the burn was a deliberate act or a mere mistake. Thomas Silkjaer, the Head of Analytics and Compliance at Estonia-based Inclusive Financial Technology Foundation (InFTF), weighed in on the discussion, suggesting that the token burn was likely deliberate. This sentiment was echoed by XRPScan, which noted that the account involved in the burn had recently been mentioned on First Ledger’s About page.
DROP is an XRP Ledger-based memecoin hosted on First Ledger, a crypto trading platform. At the time of the burn, each DROP token was valued at $5.07, which means the total value of the incinerated tokens amounted to $50,700. Following the burn, the total supply of DROP tokens has been reduced to 989,000 from the original 1 million.
Interestingly, this event occurred alongside an update from First Ledger regarding the potential impact of memecoins on the XRP price. In a post, First Ledger noted that memecoins based on XRPL could prove to be bullish for XRP. The rationale behind this is that trading XRPL-based tokens requires users to pay fees in XRP, which are then automatically burned. Therefore, an increase in the popularity of XRPL-based memecoins could lead to an increase in XRP burns, potentially driving up the price of XRP.
At present, a total of 12,964,929 XRP have been burned using XRPL transaction fees. While the future of XRPL-based memecoins remains uncertain, the recent developments surrounding DROP have certainly stirred up discussions and speculation within the XRP community. As it stands, all eyes are now on the potential impact of XRPL-based memecoins on the future of XRP.
