XRPL Survives Network-Wide Attack, Peers Reconnect After Developer Response
XRPL (XRP Ledger) endured a network-wide attack in July, but it managed to stay online without halting or forking its ledger. The assault targeted XRPL's peer-to-peer communication layer, causing mass peer disconnects due to resource exhaustion.
According to David Schwartz's XRPL hub data, the network experienced a 25% drop in average peers during the attack, with inbound connections reaching 135 and outbound peers standing at 271. Despite this, the median peer latency remained relatively stable at 167.80 milliseconds, close to its 165.69-millisecond average.
The developers responded quickly by releasing emergency software changes, including version 3.3.0-rc6 and the 3.2.1 hotfix on July 31, which restricted untrusted manifest processing. This helped maintain peer connectivity and consensus proposals continued to circulate among validators.