Ripple XRP, most famous as a remittance payments token, a cross border transaction facilitator, or to others, a security. Did you know though, that XRP can also have a hand in helping you to find spam? Here’s a thought. Now XRP is not a spam filter, nor can it actually measure, in any way, the sorts of emails that are entering your inbox, it is however down to the geniusly efficient design of XRP that means it could be used within an incentive platform that stops spam emails from being sent in the first place. What is Spam? Something posing as mail (or Spam) is the term used to describe unwanted email messages that are often designed to expose you to free advertising and or malicious scams, such as phishing emails. Spam is annoying, yet it’s now a part of our integrated lives, thanks to the power of the internet. It’s easy to set up spam filters to reduce the amount of spam that enters your inbox, but even so, these filters don’t work all of the time. It is normal to receive spam, but that doesn’t mean we should have to put up with it. According to Ethereum World News, a user on Reddit has devised a very clever plan to utilise XRP tokens in order to prevent spam in the first place. They propose: “A bold move that will once and for all stamp out spammers introducing a fee for every mail sent and the need for seeding every KYC approved email linked XRP wallet with 20 XRPs limiting the number of accounts a potential spammer can open. KYC, he says will increase the advertising value of the email account and is what prevents people from being able to set up what you call ghost email accounts.” How will this work? It sounds pretty complicated and obviously, XRP wasn’t designed for this, so some adaptation would have to take place. Even so though, the mystery contributor believes the best approach would be to implement this in stages: “The pilot phase would strictly allow Ripple to Ripple communication. After that and if the initial test phase shows result, Ripple can negotiate with other email providers. Upon agreeing, users will create accounts embedded with Ripple wallets where use is dependent on amount of XRP in those wallets. From there and if interested, other users can opt-in, embed their email with an XRP wallet allowing them to receive paid emails from advertisers at their defined rates. They can also use the same email to send payments as if they were an XRP wallet.” This creates a culture of XRP sharing and collaboration that makes spam emails costly and worthless. So, as it stands, XRP can’t be used to stop spam, however if this is picked up by the right people, who knows what the next corporate Ripple tool might be? xEmail, xSpam? Who knows.