Ripple CTO Addresses XRP Ledger Incident Concerns

According to U.Today, Ripple's Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, has addressed concerns following a recent incident on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) that caused nodes to halt or fail to progress temporarily. The incident prompted Bill Morgan, an XRP enthusiast and attorney, to seek clarification on the terminology used by developers, specifically the distinction between the network being "halted" versus "down." Schwartz explained that the key difference lies in whether the network continues to produce valid ledgers. He noted that while technical arguments can be made, the system's utility is compromised if users cannot confirm the irrevocable completion of payments. The incident began at 2:45 p.m. on November 25, when Wietse Wind, a prominent XRPL developer, tweeted that the XRPL was partially down. He reported that all Full History servers, including those operated by Ripple, were not functioning, and Ripple's cluster was also experiencing issues with the current ledger. Wind later updated that node operators were experiencing halts or crashes, but the ledger appeared to stabilize as nodes resumed and picked up a new consensus ledger. He mentioned that ledgers numbered 92346896 to 92347095 might have been lost. Further updates from Wind indicated that XRPL nodes were going down regardless of their type, including full history, current ledger, pathfinding, and submission nodes. He assured that investigations would be conducted to determine the cause of the halt. Approximately 40 minutes after the initial report, Wind noted that the XRP Ledger seemed to have recovered independently, with most nodes back on a consensus ledger and closing ledgers again. He confirmed that Full History nodes were syncing back fully, suggesting no ledgers were lost, and the network was returning to normal. In response to the incident, Brad Chase, Vice President of Engineering at RippleX, stated that the team is investigating the root cause and working on a fix. He promised to provide more updates as additional information becomes available. Chase also advised XRPL node operators and validators to update their infrastructure to the latest 2.3.0 rippled release promptly. He mentioned that more details on the root cause might be disclosed after the network adopts the fix to ensure safety. At the time of reporting, further specifics about the incident were not yet available.