The XRP▲$1.35 Ledger Operations team watched ledgers close far slower than usual during the XRP Ledger slowdown, and engineers went digging. On October 21, Ripple co-creator and former CTO David Schwartz laid out the network’s shrunken safety margins and the two kinds of failure that could bring it down, according to U.Today.
Those sluggish consensus rounds, Schwartz said, signaled that the ledger’s technical safety margins had narrowed.
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XRP Ledger slowdown puts consensus resilience under scrutiny
The slowdown could point to a targeted attack or a hidden software bug — engineers have not established either as the cause. Schwartz described two broad scenarios that could paralyze the whole network: simultaneous failures across a large number of validator servers, or a fault in consensus or another fundamental protocol function.
Read More: XRP Ledger Fixes Critical Bug That Could Have Created 18 Trillion XRP, Protecting 100B Supply
He also pushed back on the idea that taking down or overloading one large hub would be enough to stop the ledger. That includes his own node, which he said could fail locally without deciding whether XRPL as a whole stayed up.
Schwartz’s node lost monitoring access under peak load
As consensus rounds slowed, validators ran at maximum load, U.Today said. Schwartz’s node then got local RPC connections stuck in the CLOSE_WAIT state, so its monitoring system could not capture and transmit diagnostic data at the critical moment.
He rebooted his server without pinning down the precise cause of its failure.
An outdated log destination added friction to the investigation
The discussion also turned up another wrinkle: Schwartz’s node was sending logs to an outdated XRP Ledger Foundation test host. Together with the local monitoring failure, the misdirected logging made it harder to gather diagnostic information. It was not the cause of the network slowdown.
Engineers and community operators were manually combing the surviving logs to isolate and eliminate the defect, U.Today reported. Schwartz saw no reason to panic and believed the network retained enough reserve to stay operational, the account said — though it gave no fix or deployment timetable.
XRP price rose as engineers reviewed logs
XRP traded at $1.36, up 4.67% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, as of 09:20 UTC on October 21.
FAQ
What two types of failure did Schwartz say could halt the XRP Ledger?
He described widespread simultaneous failures among validator servers, or a failure in consensus or another fundamental protocol function. He did not identify either as the cause of this slowdown.
What connection state affected RPC access on Schwartz’s node?
The local RPC connections became stuck in the CLOSE_WAIT state. That prevented his monitoring system from capturing and sending diagnostics at the key moment.
What action did Schwartz take after his node’s monitoring failed?
He rebooted his server after the monitoring system failed to provide the needed diagnostic information. The action concerned his node, not the ledger as a whole.
Where was Schwartz’s node sending its logs?
It was sending them to an outdated XRP Ledger Foundation test host. The report says engineers and community operators were reviewing surviving logs manually.
Who is examining the surviving logs?
Engineers and community operators were working through the remaining logs to isolate and eliminate the defect. The report did not provide a completion date or repair schedule.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice.