The XRP Ledger (XRPL) experienced a network halt that lasted for just over an hour before successfully resuming operations, according to statements published by Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz. The incident, which took place on February 4, saw the ledger freeze at block height 93927174 for 64 minutes before validators successfully rebooted it at 10:58 am UTC.
XRP Ledger Halted For 1 Hour
Blockchain explorers confirm that no new validations were published during the halt, raising immediate questions throughout the XRP community about the cause of the disruption. Moments after network activity resumed, Schwartz—also known as “JoelKatz”—took to X to reassure users and share preliminary findings.
“The network is now recovering. We don’t know exactly what caused the issue yet,” Schwartz wrote. “Super-preliminary observation: It looked like consensus was running but validations were not being published, causing the network to drift apart. Validator operators manually intervened to choose a sane starting point (after the last ledger that anyone could have seen as fully validated) and begin publishing validations from there. (This can be done without coordination, but it’s always better to get second and third opinions.)”
He added that once a few validations were issued by several sources, the network managed to re-establish consensus, bringing the ledger back on track. However, he emphasized the preliminary nature of these findings: “Once servers started seeing a few validations from a few sources, they were able to build enough consensus to pull the network over to a coordinated ledger stream after the last ledger the network managed to validate. This is all preliminary and might turn out to be wrong.”
Following up on the root cause, Schwartz noted: “Very few UNL operators actually made any changes, as far as I can tell, so it’s possible the network spontaneously recovered. I’m not sure yet.”
Later, he offered a further update: “Update: It looks like, as far as we can tell, only one validator operator manually intervened. It’s still not entirely clear if that solved the problem or the network self-healed.”
Shortly after operations resumed, RippleX—the developer-focused arm of Ripple Labs—also weighed in: “The XRP Ledger has resumed forward progress — the RippleX team is investigating the root cause and will provide updates as soon as possible. Reminder: your funds were always safe!”
Although the XRPL has a reputation for speed and reliability, this outage underscores the broader realities of distributed ledger systems, where validator and consensus behaviors remain crucial for network stability. This is not the first time the XRPL has faced technical difficulties. Over the past year, the ledger encountered a node crash in November 2024 and suffered full history node failures in September of the same year.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.4979.
Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
