XRP Ledger Suffers Rare Outage, Halts Block Production for Nearly an Hour

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) suffered a rare outage on Feb. 4, halting block production for nearly an hour before recovering without major interventions.

The XRP Ledger (XRPL) experienced a rare halt in block production on Saturday, pausing new ledger entries for nearly an hour before resuming without major interventions from Ripple. The issue arose at ledger height 93,927,173, affecting the network’s ability to achieve consensus on validating ledgers.

While assets remained safely locked on the XRPL during the outage, the disruption raised concerns among XRP enthusiasts. Despite efforts to decentralize the network, Ripple still maintains a presence on the Unique Node List (UNL) with 2 out of 35 validators. The recent changes in validator structure sparked speculation on whether they contributed to the outage.

According to Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz, servers eventually received enough cross-validations to rebuild consensus and resume ledger progression. Schwartz highlighted that initial assessments did not identify any significant external changes from UNL operators that enabled the network to restore itself.

The outage sparked a flurry of commentary on social media, with varying perspectives on its implications. Daniel Keller, who identifies himself as the ‘CEO of the XRPL,’ confirmed that all 35 nodes continued proposing blocks during the disruption, with a quorum of 28.

As the network recovered, Schwartz provided updates on the situation, indicating that only one validator operator appeared to have intervened manually. However, Schwartz noted that it remains unclear whether this action resolved the issue or if the network self-recovered.

The disruption also coincided with a sharp sell-off in XRP, with prices dropping by 10% to reach $2.45 at the time of writing. This sell-off follows a recent downturn in XRP prices, which briefly fell below $2 over the weekend after former U.S. President Donald Trump's latest trade tariffs.

Earlier in the week, XRP prices had rebounded to nearly $2.80 on Saturday, following a volatile week that saw the token briefly cross the $2.70 mark on Friday. However, the network outage and the sell-off in XRP prices added further downward pressure on the token.

According to CoinGecko, XRP prices experienced a steep decline of over 10% on Saturday, with prices dropping to as low as $2.44. This sell-off also impacted XRP's market capitalization, which slipped by 1.0% to reach $121.28 billion.

The downturn in XRP prices was also accompanied by a decrease in derivatives activity, with trading volume down by 45.63% to reach $13.84 billion. Open interest in XRP derivatives also slipped by 2.70% to reach $3.68 billion.

This decline in derivatives activity suggests that traders may be reducing their exposure to XRP, which could be contributing to the bearish momentum in the token's price.

Despite this setback, XRP has still been one of the biggest gainers in the ongoing crypto market rally. The token has surged by almost 400% over the past year, with most of these gains coming in the past three months.

Optimism surrounding potential regulatory changes in the United States has helped fuel this momentum in XRP, with the token’s price surging to new highs in recent months. However, this recent outage and the sell-off in XRP prices may be a setback in this rally.

Ripple has yet to release a full post-mortem on the outage, but Schwartz confirmed that investigations are underway. Whether this was a one-off failure or a sign of deeper network fragility remains to be seen.