XRP Ledger Suffers Hour-Long Outage, Price Drops 8.3%

The XRP Ledger, a prominent cryptocurrency network, experienced a brief outage on Tuesday, February 5, 2025, leading to a halt in block production for approximately one hour. The disruption, which occurred at ledger height 93927173, was attributed to a consensus issue where validations weren’t being published, causing the network to “drift apart,” according to Ripple CTO David Schwartz.

During the incident, all 35 network validators were actively proposing, but the network entered a “silent network” failure mode where validators stopped sending validations. This protective measure was designed to prevent servers from accepting ledgers as fully validated when there was uncertainty about network agreement. Despite the disruption, no assets were at risk during the downtime, and the servers recognized the network wasn’t working correctly, responding by not reporting any ledgers as trusted throughout the hour-long incident.

The halt triggered immediate response from the XRP community. Xaman Wallet, a service provider in the XRP ecosystem, quickly informed users about the situation and confirmed when normal operations resumed. This incident occurs against a backdrop of recent technical challenges for the XRP Ledger, including a node crash in November 2024 and full history node failures in September 2024.

The price of XRP reacted to the network disruption, showing an 8.3% decrease to $2.52, according to data from CoinGecko. However, this movement aligned with broader trends in the cryptocurrency market rather than being solely attributed to the network halt. The recovery process happened without major intervention, and transaction processing resumed without any reported issues.

Recent changes to the XRP Ledger include an update to reserve requirements. In December 2024, validators approved new reserve fees, reducing the base reserve requirement from 10 XRP to 1 XRP, making account activation more accessible at current price levels. Technical teams continue to monitor the network for any residual effects of the halt, though normal operations have fully resumed. The investigation into the root cause of the validation publishing issue remains ongoing.