FUNDAMENTALS: WHERE THE FEE GOES Every transaction on the XRP Ledger costs a tiny amount of $XRP, and the part most people miss, is what happens to that fee afterwards. On most networks the fee is paid to someone… Miners or stakers collect it as their reward for keeping the chain running. On the XRP Ledger nobody collects it. The fee is destroyed the moment the transaction is processed, and that $XRP is gone from the supply for good. The reason has nothing to do with price. The fee exists to stop spam. Sending one payment costs almost nothing, but flooding the network with junk costs real money, and when the ledger gets busy, the required fee rises automatically, so an attacker pays more the harder they push. That design also means validators earn nothing for their work. Exchanges, universities, infrastructure firms and developers run them because they depend on the network staying healthy, not because they are paid to. So, since no new $XRP can ever be created, the supply only moves in one direction, very slowly downwards. It is far too small to be a price story, and it was never meant to be one…It is simply a cost that protects everyone…paid to no one.