XRP Ledger Study Shows Potential for Improved Defense Against Targeted Attacks
A new study has found that by adding just two to three extra peer connections per participating node on the XRP Ledger, the number of nodes a targeted attack must remove to disrupt consensus can be sharply raised.
The researchers tested the effects of random K-out augmentation on the network's robustness and found that at 60% participation with K=2, the quorum critical attack size rose from 11% to 38% when removals targeted the highest-degree nodes. This is a significant improvement in defense against attacks.
The study used hourly snapshots collected over two months in 2022 and selected the graph closest to the dataset's average characteristics, producing a representative snapshot with 952 nodes, 15,070 edges, and an average degree of 31.7. The historical map also anchored the starting thresholds.