The XRP Ledger recently faced a roughly 64-minute transaction stoppage, triggering a heated debate amongst critics and supporters regarding the seriousness of the situation. The halt, which took place late last Tuesday, paused at ledger height 93,927,173.
Some regarded this hour-long interruption as a consensus failure, exposing the network to potential coordinated attacks and criticizing the perceived centralization among a handful of trusted validators. Daniel Keller, CTO of blockchain infrastructure firm Eminence, responded to these concerns by stating that the halt was a part of the design to maintain ledger integrity. He admitted, “There are tradeoffs with every solution. Pausing until a solution is found is one of them.”
Keller did concede that the situation wasn’t ideal and that the network failed to reach a consensus on a specific ledger. This failure prevented the creation of a new ledger. He assured, “There is something wrong, we will have to figure out what and fix it.”
The XRP Ledger includes a halt as a result of its consensus mechanism. If over 20% of the network’s UNL validators disagree, the system temporarily halts to prevent issues like double-spending and ledger inconsistencies. This safety procedure allows for automatic recovery once validators synchronize their UNLs, Ripple CTO David Schwartz explained in 2021.
Even though the XRP Ledger boasts more than 200 validators in total, a much smaller number of validators participate in the consensus process on Unique Node Lists (UNLs). The XRPL Foundation recommends a UNL with at least 35 validators. In comparison, Ethereum has over 1 million active validators, and Bitcoin’s network consists of at least 65,000 nodes and thousands of miners globally.
Bitcoin and Ethereum have experienced downtime due to value overflow incidents and network splits in the past. Other blockchain networks like Solana, TON, Avalanche, and Sui have also faced outages or disruptions.
David Schwartz, CTO of XRPL developer Ripple, confirmed that the network had recovered and that transactions were processing as usual. The root cause, however, remains unknown. Schwartz assured users that no assets on the XRPL were lost as a result of the incident. He stated, “It just caused ledgers not to be seen as trusted for about an hour.”
Despite the incident, XRP has gained around 4% since the recovery, even though it is currently down by 2.7% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s XRP Price Page.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Always do your own research and consult with a professional before making any financial decisions.
