Ripple’s XRP Ledger has recovered from a network halt that prevented validations from being published for over an hour, Ripple’s chief technology officer confirmed.
Network activity froze at block height 93927174 for 64 minutes before the blockchain was rebooted on Feb. 4 at 10:58 am UTC, XRPL’s explorer page shows.
“It looked like consensus was running but validations were not being published, causing the network to drift apart,” Ripple technology chief David Schwartz said in a Feb. 4 X post.
He added validator operators had to manually intervene to “choose a sane starting point” to build enough consensus to pull the network over to a coordinated ledger stream. Schwartz said that his observations were only preliminary and that Ripple was still investigating the root cause.
Schwartz noted that very few Unique Node List validators were forced to make changes to reboot the network, “so it’s possible the network spontaneously recovered.”
RippleX’s X account noted that customer funds remained safe throughout the incident.
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) February 4, 2025
Around 2 million transactions are executed from anywhere between 30,000 to 60,000 unique senders each day, XRPSCAN data shows.
Consequently, around 88,000 transactions may have been delayed as a result of the network halt.
The network halt sparked chatter about Ripple’s centralized setup after Daniel Keller, chief technology officer of XRPL node operator Eminence, pointed out that “all 35 nodes” were back validating transactions.
XRP Ledger’s centralization concerns have been a common source of criticism given competitor blockchains like Ethereum continue to decentralize with more than 1 million daily active validators securing that network.
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XRP (XRP) hit a 24-hour low of $2.45 at the time of XRP Ledger’s network halt but has since rebounded 3.2% to $2.53 at the time of publication, CoinGecko data shows.
The token has been one of the industry’s best performers since Donald Trump won the US election, increasing 396% since Nov. 5.
XRP Ledger’s network halt comes as Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is pushing for XRP to be included as a US reserve asset, which Trump’s crypto czar David Sacks will explore.
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