The XRP headbook (XRPL) was short -lived early Wednesday when a consensus mechanism -Design led to a temporary stop in network operations.
The incident began when the network’s consensus process seemed to work, but validations were not published, causing the network’s headbooks to “drive apart.”
In the XRP headbook, consensus between validators is crucial to updating the main book with new transactions. If validators cannot agree on which transactions to include in the next headbox version, the network cannot move on.
A “operation” in this context means that although the consensus protocol technically ran, validations (or affirmations of transaction kit) were not published.
At least one validator operator manually intervened to reset the network’s consensus to a previously validated headbox mode, although the network seemed to have fixed the problem independently, Ripple CTO David Schwarz said in an X post after the incident.
“It is likely that servers refused to send validations precisely because they knew something was wrong,” Schwarz said. “And wanted to make sure no server accepted a headbok as fully validated when they couldn’t be sure the network would keep and eventually agree on this headbok.
“A possible state of error for XRPL is if all validators believe there is something wrong with the network, everyone refuses to send any validations, and then there is no scrap to let the network reconverter. This is the “quiet network” error, “Schwarz added.
No assets were at risk in downtime with XRP prices largely in line with wider bitcoin and altcoin movements.
