Nairobi (coinchapter.com) – The XRP ledger (XRPL) received a rare halt on February 4th, halting block production for almost an hour before recovering without major intervention. Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz confirmed the issue and said that the consensus remained operational, but no verifications were made public and the network was being dragged down.
XRP ledger stops at ledger height of 93,927,173
Block production stopped at leisure height of 93,927,173, and the validators failed to achieve consensus. Schwartz explained that the server could eventually see sufficient validation from multiple sources, rebuild the consensus and resume progressing the ledger. He noted that the initial evaluation suggested that the network voluntarily recovered without significant external changes from the unique node list (UNL) operator.
The cessation raised concerns about whether past changes in the validator structure played a role. In 2023, Ripple reduced its impact on two of its 35 validators to reduce network control and promote decentralization.
Ripple Network faces technical challenges
Schwartz emphasized that the assets were not lost during the suspension, but the ledger was not considered trusted for nearly an hour. This confusion followed other technical issues in several months, including the November 2024 node crash and the complete historical node failure in September 2024, and the need for emergency patches.
On social media, XRP ledger users discussed the causes of the confusion. Daniel Keller, who calls himself “XRPL CEO,” confirmed that all 35 nodes continued to propose blocks with a quorum of 28.
“I knew Ripple’s UNL was backfiring.”
Schwartz later provided an update, suggesting that there was only one Valtta operator manually intervened. However, he admitted that it remains unclear whether the action resolved the problem or whether the network self-healed.
XRP Price Crash – Is Bull at risk?
The suspension caused a sudden sale on XRP, with prices down 10% to $2.45. The token has already faced volatility after former US President Donald Trump’s latest trade tariffs, falling to $2 for a short weekend. It rebounded to almost $2.80 on February 4th before network disruption added more downside pressure.
Derivative data shows market reliability, with trading volumes falling 45.63% to $13.84 billion, from 2.70% to $36.8 billion. The decline in derivatives activity suggests that traders are reducing exposure and strengthening bearish momentum.
Despite this set time, XRP was one of the biggest winners in the still-in-the-go Crypto Market Rally. Tokens have skyrocketed almost 400% over the past year, with most of the profits generated over the past three months. Optimism surrounding the changing US regulatory potential has fueled this momentum.
Ripple has not yet released a full posthumous posthumous statement on the outage, but Schwartz has confirmed that an investigation is ongoing. Whether this was a one-off failure or a sign of a deeper network vulnerability remains to be seen.