The XRP Ledger does not have a fixed governance committee or central authority setting fees. Instead, it uses a decentralised fee voting mechanism where trusted validators express their preferred fee settings, and the network automatically adopts the median of those preferences.

Every 256 ledgers (roughly every 15 minutes, since ledgers close in 3–4 seconds), a new "flag ledger" is created. During each flag ledger cycle, validators broadcast their preferred settings for both the base transaction cost and the reserve requirements. If a majority of trusted validators agree on a new setting, a SetFee pseudo-transaction is included in the next validated ledger, and the new settings take effect the following ledger.

This mechanism balances two competing priorities: keeping the XRPL accessible with low fees versus protecting the network from spam and resource exhaustion. Validator operators configure their preferred settings in the [voting] section of the rippled.cfg file. The protocol then computes the median across all trusted validator votes.

A historic example of fee voting in action occurred in December 2024, when validators collectively voted to reduce the base account reserve from 10 XRP to 1 XRP — a 90% reduction. This decision was triggered by XRP's significant price appreciation, which had made the reserve prohibitively expensive for new users. The change was implemented at ledger index 92508417 and immediately made account creation 90% cheaper in XRP terms.