Amendment Idea: Memo Fees

[mvadari]

  title: Memo Fees
  created: 2025-11-20
  author: Mayukha Vadari (@mvadari)
  status: Idea
  category: Amendment

Memo Fees

Abstract

Avoid/reduce memo spam

1. Overview

This proposal does not involve changing any transactions, just how memos are processed (and equivalent tx fees). The FeeSettings object will also be modified.

This feature will require an amendment, tentatively titled MemoFees.

2. Ledger Entry: FeeSettings

2.1. Fields

As a reference, here are the existing fields for the FeeSettings ledger object.

Field	Required?	JSON Type	Internal Type	Description
BaseFeeDrops	✔️	string	Amount	The transaction cost of the "reference transaction" in drops of XRP.
Flags	✔️	number	UInt32	A bitmap of boolean flags enabled for this object. Currently, the protocol defines no flags for FeeSettings objects. The value is always 0.
LedgerEntryType	✔️	string	UInt16	The value 0x0073, mapped to the string FeeSettings, indicates that this object contains the ledger's fee settings.
ReserveBaseDrops	✔️	string	Amount	The base reserve for an account in the XRP Ledger, as drops of XRP.
ReserveIncrementDrops	✔️	string	Amount	The incremental owner reserve for owning objects, as drops of XRP.
PreviousTxnID	✔️	string	UInt256	The identifying hash of the transaction that most recently modified this entry.
PreviousTxnLgrSeq	✔️	number	UInt32	The index of the ledger that contains the transaction that most recently modified this entry.

This spec proposes one additional field:

Field	Constant?	Required?	Default Value	JSON Type	Internal Type	Description
FreeMemoBytes	No	No	512	number	UInt32	The number of bytes in a memo that a user can include in a transaction for free.
MemoBytesPerDrop	No	No	10	number	UInt32	The number of bytes per drop in the fee

2.1.1. FreeMemoBytes

This field will be initialized to 512, though of course this value can be changed via fee voting.

2.1.2. MemoBytesPerDrop

This field will be initialized to 10, though of course this value can be changed via fee voting.

3. Transaction: Common Fields

As a reference, here are the fields that all transactions currently have. This spec does not propose any modifications.

3.1. Transaction Fee

Memos are now free up to FreeMemoBytes bytes, and beyond that length are charged 1 drop per MemoBytesPerDrop bytes. In other words, a 256-byte memo would still be free, but a 522 byte memo would cost 1 extra drop (in addition to the transaction base fee).

4. Transaction: SetFee

Analogous changes to FeeSettings

5. RPC: fee

Add fields for new fee fields