XRP Ledger resumes operations after a brief network disruption, restoring normal activity

The XRP Ledger has successfully resumed operations after a brief disruption on February 5, 2025, which halted transaction validation for about an hour. RippleX confirmed that the network is fully operational again, though the precise cause of the issue remains unclear.

Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, addressed the disruption in a post on X, explaining that validators had stopped publishing confirmations even though the consensus mechanism appeared to be functioning as intended. Schwartz’s initial assessment suggested that servers may have intentionally withheld validations to prevent the ledger from accepting incorrect transactions.

Initially, Schwartz believed that multiple validator operators manually intervened to fix the problem. However, he later clarified that only one operator took action, and it remains uncertain whether this intervention directly resolved the issue or if the network healed itself. Despite the disruption, Schwartz reassured that no ledgers that had received majority validation were lost or impacted.

The XRP Ledger operates on a consensus-based mechanism, which ensures that validators agree on which transactions to process. If they fail to reach an agreement, the network temporarily halts. This disruption came on the heels of a similar, albeit shorter, issue on November 25, 2024, where several nodes crashed and caused a brief 10-minute outage. Ripple subsequently advised validators to upgrade to the latest version of its software, Rippled 2.3.0, to improve network stability and avoid future interruptions.

Despite the temporary disruption, the price of XRP remained largely unaffected, trading at around $2.50, with only a slight 4% change over the past 24 hours.