XRP Ledger Survives Network-Wide Attack in July

XRP Ledger suffered a network-wide attack in July 2026, but David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz's hub stayed online. The attackers targeted the peer-to-peer communication layer rather than the consensus mechanism.

The flood of fake or unverified validator manifests overwhelmed xrpld software, causing nodes to disconnect peers and protect themselves from resource exhaustion.

Schwartz's metrics show that after emergency software fixes, peer connections have stabilized. Current peer connections stand at 406, with an average of 401.12 between August 25 and September 8.

Latency remained generally contained, with median peer latency measuring 167.80 milliseconds, close to its 165.69-millisecond average.