XRP Ledger Experiences Rare Disruption, Halts Block Production for an Hour

The XRP Ledger experienced a rare disruption on Tuesday, halting block production for about an hour before spontaneously recovering. Network activity froze at ledger height 93927173, prompting an immediate investigation from validators. Since then, the XRP Ledger (XRPL) has resumed normal operations with no reported loss of assets or transactions.

“It looked like consensus was running, but validations were not being published, causing the network to drift apart,” said David Schwartz, CTO of XRPL, on X. “Very few UNL operators actually made any changes, as far as I can tell, so it’s possible the network spontaneously recovered.”

Schwartz refers to the Unique Node List (UNL), a key component of XRPL’s consensus mechanism, which is a trusted validator directory ensuring network integrity and transaction finality.

In January 2023, the XRPL Foundation removed a Ripple-operated validator from its UNL to comply with a “one entity, one validator” policy, reducing Ripple’s influence to 2 out of 34 validators at the time. A subsequent update in March expanded the UNL to 36 validators by adding community-run nodes, with the quorum threshold remaining at 80% of trusted validators. At the time, an unresponsive validator from the University of Korea was also removed, bringing the count to 35.

Critics have raised concerns about this decision, but Daniel Keller, CTO of XRPL node operator Eminence, responded shortly after the halt, stating that “all 35 nodes are proposing.”

The incident sparked concerns about transaction safety, but Schwartz reassured that no assets were at risk. “It just caused ledgers not to be seen as trusted for about an hour,” Schwartz clarified on X. “The servers knew the network wasn’t working correctly and so did not report any ledgers as trusted during the incident.”

This disruption comes as the XRP Ledger ecosystem faces broader technical challenges. The network has dealt with issues like a node crash in November 2024 and full history node failures in September 2024, which required emergency patches.

XRP was down 8.3% on the day, trading at $2.52, according to CoinGecko data.