O XRP Ledger, the backbone of the XRP cryptocurrency, suffered a 64-minute outage on February 4. The XRP Ledger stopped processing transactions, leaving many users uneasy. The incident, although short-lived, shed light on the complex infrastructure that underpins digital currencies and sparked discussions about the resilience and future of blockchain technology.
The outage was attributed to a “network outage,” a technical term that refers to a communication failure between validator nodes, the computers that keep the network running, according to Ripple CTO David Schwartz. In an initial comment, the Ripple insider noted:
“It looked like consensus was running, but validations weren’t being published, causing the network to drift apart. Validator operators manually intervened to pick a sensible starting point (after the last ledger that anyone could have seen as fully validated) and start publishing validations from there. (This can be done without coordination, but it’s always best to get a second and third opinion.) Once servers started seeing some validations from a few sources, they were able to build enough consensus to pull the network into a coordinated ledger flow after the last ledger that the network managed to validate. This is all preliminary and could end up being wrong.”
He explained that the incident was triggered by a failure to publish validations despite the existing consensus among validators. Schwartz stated that the network could have “self-recovered” or a single validator intervened to restore operations. “It appears that, as far as we can tell, only one validator operator manually intervened. It is not yet entirely clear whether this resolved the issue or whether the network self-recovered,” complemented.
The incident raises important questions about the resilience of blockchain networks. Despite the outage, the XRP Ledger managed to recover quickly, demonstrating the network’s ability to adapt and correct errors. While the outage briefly affected transactions on the network, there were no reports of asset losses. Despite the scare, the XRP Ledger remains an important platform in the cryptocurrency world, with its ability to process transactions quickly and efficiently.
At the time of publication, the price of XRP was quoted at US$2,54, down 3.7% in the last 24 hours.