Ripple's Chief Technology Officer Perplexed by Odd Network Activity Observed in XRP
Ripple CTO David Schwartz recently encountered an unusual network behavior on the XRP Ledger. At 1:59 a.m. PDT, a spike in peer round-trip latency was observed, lasting approximately 15 minutes. This anomaly resulted in three peer connections dropping, causing significantly worse performance on some connections.
However, the latency increase was not consistent across all connections, which is unusual as a roughly constant latency increase would be expected for all connections. Schwartz, who is monitoring the network through a dedicated hub he launched to track XRP Ledger behavior and performance, described this unusual data point as strange and unexpected.
Schwartz suspects that the issue might be related to network congestion, but he is not certain. He plans to gather more data from the hub to understand network behavior and performance better. Additionally, he suspects that some server disconnections labeled as "abuse" could be false positives caused by defects in the XRPL code.
The Ripple server operates as a production service and aims for maximum uptime and reliability, relying on a single hub. Schwartz is also working on improving the hub's instrumentation to gather more data.
In other news, amendments fixAMMv1_3, fixEnforceNFTokenTrustlineV2, and fixPayChanCancelAfter have gained majority and started their 14-day countdown timer. If these amendments retain support, they might be activated on Aug. 29, 2025. Furthermore, Alloy/Grafana monitoring is being added to the hub to aid in the analysis of network data.
No disruptive testing will be done unless there are very unusual circumstances. Schwartz emphasized that his primary focus is to maintain the reliability and performance of the XRP Ledger. As he continues to investigate the unusual network behavior, updates will be provided as more information becomes available.
[1] Source: Ripple CTO's Twitter post [2] Source: Ripple CTO's blog post [3] Source: XRP Ledger Community Forum discussion [5] Source: Ripple CTO's Reddit AMA session
- David Schwartz, the Ripple CTO, is investigating an unusual network behavior on the XRP Ledger, involving a spike in peer round-trip latency, three dropped peer connections, and inconsistent latency increases across all connections.
- The network congestion and server disconnections labeled as "abuse" in the XRPL code might be causing the unusual behavior observed by Schwartz.
- In an effort to improve the XRP Ledger's performance and gather more data, Schwartz is planning to enhance the hub's instrumentation, add Alloy/Grafana monitoring, and facilitate the activation of several amendments, including fixAMMv1_3, fixEnforceNFTokenTrustlineV2, and fixPayChanCancelAfter.
