Ripple successfully managed to address an interruption in its blockchain, the XRP Ledger, which led to a 64-minute network downtime on the 5th of February.
The Chief Technology Officer of Ripple, David Schwartz, attributed the disruption to a phenomenon known as ‘network drift,’ where validations (block production) failed to be disseminated despite the consensus being in operation.
Schwartz mentioned that the network was brought back online with the assistance of a single validator or possibly through what he described as a “self-healing” process.
“It seems that, from what we can gather, only one validator operator took manual action. It is still not entirely clear whether this action resolved the issue or if the network self-corrected.”
By mentioning “self-heal,” Schwartz was alluding to the XRP Ledger’s capability to determine a new starting point for block continuity through a supermajority agreement among validators.
Wallet Services on XRP Ledger Affected
The downtime had a temporary impact on wallet transactions within the network, as observed by Xaman Wallet, the equivalent of Solana’s Phantom wallet for the XRP Ledger.
Despite the transaction glitches, Schwartz confirmed that no assets were compromised during the incident.
Nevertheless, market analysts, such as MartyParty, raised concerns about the blockchain’s sluggish transaction processing speed and questioned the survivability of its native token, XRP. He remarked,
“$XRP can handle only 20 transactions per second. I am skeptical about the viability of $XRP.”
Following the network disturbance, XRP experienced a 6% decline during the US trading hours on the 4th of February. As of the current moment, the altcoin was struggling to maintain a price above $2.5 and was trading below crucial moving averages on longer timeframes.
This further reinforced the prevalent short-term negative outlook, which could deteriorate if the prevailing pessimistic sentiment lingers leading up to the US Jobs report scheduled for the 7th of February.
It is important to note that Bitcoin faced resistance around the $100,000 mark and retraced, influencing XRP’s market momentum and price movements negatively.