XRP Ledger Halts: Network Diverges, Manual Intervention Ensures Resumption

The XRP Ledger, a decentralized blockchain technology, experienced a temporary halt in block production on February 4, raising concerns within the crypto community. The disruption lasted for approximately 64 minutes, during which network activity stalled at block height 93,927,174. The network has since resumed normal operations, but the underlying cause of the disruption remains under investigation.

Ripple's CTO, David Schwartz, addressed the incident on X (formerly Twitter), stating that while the network was back online, the cause of the issue was still uncertain. Schwartz commented, "Super-preliminary observation: It looked like consensus was running, but validations were not being published, causing the network to drift apart." This indicates a lapse in the validation process, which may have caused the network to momentarily diverge.

During the outage, validator operators took emergency measures by manually selecting a reliable starting point from the last fully validated ledger, which facilitated the resumption of transaction validations. Schwartz remarked, "It looks like, as far as we can tell, only one validator operator manually intervened." This led to a realignment of the network, although the necessity of this manual intervention in resolving the issue remains unclear.

Schwartz reassured users that their assets remained uncompromised throughout the disruption. "Your funds were always safe!" noted RippleX, confirming the integrity of user assets even during the network’s instability. The interruption led to ledgers being temporarily marked as untrusted, but only for a brief period, and the majority of validations continued unimpeded.

This incident is not the first technical challenge faced by the XRP Ledger. The network previously encountered a 10-minute halt in November 2024 due to a node crash. Just weeks earlier, in September 2024, complications arose from a limitation in the SQLite database, affecting full history nodes and their ability to effectively manage large volumes of transaction data.

Despite these setbacks, the XRPL continues to show signs of growth. In its Q4 2024 market report, Ripple highlighted robust activity across several key metrics. On-chain DEX trading volume reached an impressive $1 billion, and the network saw a notable increase in wallet creations, tallying 709,000 new accounts during this period.

Following the recent service interruption