Ripple CTO Criticizes ‘Robin Hood’ Token Concept

The concept of issuing ‘Robin Hood’ tokens based on the community-approved XLS-39 amendment is not without its flaws, according to Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz.

I *love* that idea.

— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) February 9, 2024

The Ripple CTO expressed his “love” for the idea. This was his reaction to the concept of ‘Clawback-enabled tokenomics’ proposed by senior Ripple Labs programmer Neil Hartner.

The proposal involves redistributing assets from the top 10% of holders to the poorest 90% at random intervals.

The mentioned XLS-39 Clawback introduced a new level of token control for the XRP Ledger in version 1.12.0. The amendment allows issuers to ‘claw back’ assets for account recovery or in cases of suspected fraudulent activity.

Schwartz agreed with XRP Ledger developer Wietse Wind, who noted that holders of a significant portion of tokens could distribute them across multiple accounts, thus circumventing the XLS-39 ‘clawback’ mechanism.

Yeah. And I guess if people for some reason did want to hold a lot of it, they’d just do it in several accounts. Too bad. It seemed kind of cool.

— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) February 9, 2024

Hartner countered by suggesting the use of ‘authorized trust lines’ to combat abuse. In response, Wind, with a touch of irony, proposed to “broaden the scope of this thought experiment.”

The workaround that keeps on coming back ?

But yeah, I agree, it would be fun. Maybe we should broaden the scope of this thought experiment ??

— WietseWind (?+? Xumm @ XRPL Labs) (@WietseWind) February 9, 2024

The debates surrounding the feasibility of Hartner’s proposal highlight broader questions about the effectiveness and practicality of implementing feedback mechanisms in tokenomics, as noted by U.Today.

Earlier in February, Cinneamhain Ventures managing partner Adam Cochran accused the team behind the DEX aggregator Jupiter of dumping their own asset, JUP. In response, the project’s founder called the criticism “fig posting with zero facts.”