The recent technical failure on the XRP Ledger halted block production for about an hour. Network recovery is underway, but the causes remain unclear.
Causes of the XRP Ledger Failure
According to Ripple's CTO David Schwartz, the network is recovering, but the exact reasons for the failure are still unknown. It is speculated that validators not being published led to a network drift. Validators needed to be published from a 'sane' starting point after the network stopped.
Bitcoin Community's Reaction
The failure was used by some members of the Bitcoin community to mock XRP. One quip noted that the XRPL being offline did not affect banks, as no banks use it. However, Schwartz pointed out that Bitcoin has also faced network-level failures in the past.
Current Status and Impact on XRP
Despite the technical issues, no ledger with majority validation has been lost. However, the price of XRP fell over 6% following the incident, underperforming the rest of the top 10 cryptocurrencies.
These events highlight the importance of stability in distributed networks and the complexity of preventing failures. This incident is not unique to the XRP Ledger, as the Bitcoin network has also faced similar issues in the past.
