Bitquery Report Shows 0.8% of XRP Ledger Activity Comes From Real Human Payments

Ripple CTO emeritus David Schwartz defended the XRP Ledger after analytics firm Bitquery found that just 793 accounts were responsible for 93.2% of the network’s transaction activity in August 2026.

An XRP critic posted the findings on X, saying the accounts were “all bots and spammers” and that less than 1% of XRPL activity came from real human payments. The critic called XRPL a “ghost chain.”

Meanwhile, Schwartz disagreed. He said the XRP Ledger’s low fees naturally attract both useful and useless transactions.

His response was essentially that if the network is cheap to use, people will use it for all kinds of things. Making it more expensive just to reduce low-value activity wouldn’t necessarily make the network better.

This is such a weird thing to say. Yes, it's very cheap. Yes, you can use it for useful things and useless things. If it were more expensive and fewer people did low-value things on it, would that somehow make it better?

— David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz (@JoelKatz) September 10, 2026

Bitquery analyzed more than 5 billion XRP Ledger transactions from 2013 to September 2026.

In August 2026, the XRPL processed about 81.6 million transactions. But most of these transactions came from a small number of accounts.

Just 793 accounts were responsible for 93.2% of all August transactions. Of these, 767 were identified as automated accounts, including trading bots, NFT bots, and spam accounts. The other 26 were exchange wallets.

DEX trading bots made up 48.1% of all transactions, while dust-sending accounts made up another 23%. Bitquery said this shows that transaction numbers alone may not accurately reflect how many real people are using the XRP Ledger.

Bitquery also looked at transactions that appeared to come from real people rather than bots or spam. It found that 89.6% of active accounts were considered real users, but their transactions made up just 0.8% of all XRPL activity in August.

Bitquery excluded accounts that made more than 100 payments during the month and looked for payments involving more than a tiny amount.

The company said this percentage has stayed almost the same since 2018, even as the XRP ecosystem has grown and added features like NFTs, stablecoins, and an automated market maker.

Bitquery also noted that its research only covers activity directly on the XRP Ledger. XRP trading on centralized exchanges usually isn’t recorded as individual transactions on the ledger.

Bitquery found that very small “dust” payments make up a large part of XRP Ledger activity.

So far in 2026, about 52.8 million XRP payments sent 10 drops or less. Just 10,549 accounts sent these payments to more than 2.4 million wallets.

Bitquery also found a phishing campaign that started on August 23 and reached 1.28 million wallets in 17 days. The campaign used only about 69.6 XRP in fees, worth around $96 at the time.

The report also found spam linked to phishing messages, token airdrops, and AI-agent payments. However, Bitquery said activity linked to x402 was one of the few growing areas that was not mainly caused by spam.

Bitquery also found some positive signs on the XRP Ledger. The company highlighted Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin as one of the strongest signs of real growth. The amount of RLUSD being moved has increased more than 70 times since its launch.

Bitquery found more than $1.02 billion worth of RLUSD in circulation. However, ownership is still highly concentrated, with the top 10 wallets holding 81.6% of the supply.

The report also noted that the XRP Ledger has processed more transactions than Ethereum since its launch. However, Bitquery stressed that a high number of transactions does not necessarily mean many people are actively using the network.

Overall, the report paints a picture: XRPL handles a huge number of transactions, but much of that activity comes from bots, spam, and very small payments. Genuine human activity makes up a much smaller share.