Some debates never seem to settle. The missing XRP ledgers? It is one of those topics that keeps surfacing, sparking back-and-forth arguments between Bitcoin and XRP supporters. The main concern: the first 32,569 ledgers, gone. No record. Some say this raises questions about XRP’s credibility, especially considering the premined supply and Ripple’s push to position XRP as a U.S. reserve asset.
Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz recently stepped in to set the record straight. He explained that all previous accounts are reflected in ledger 32,570, the earliest one still available.
Gamza KhanzadaevSo, functionally? Nothing lost. But still, the missing history fuels speculation.
A bit of background. In the XRP Ledger’s early days, there was a mishap. Ledgers vanished. No backup, no recovery — just gone. But because of how XRP works, it did not break anything.
Unlike Bitcoin, which requires a full transaction history to reconstruct its unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), XRP (and Ethereum, to an extent) stores a summarized version of its state in each new ledger. No need to go back and piece things together.
Some say this is not just a technical hiccup. The missing ledgers add to concerns about transparency and the distribution of premined XRP.
Bitcoin supporters argue that Bitcoin’s full historical record gives it an edge. In response, Ripple’s CTO pointed out that, at the time, they did not even think this ledger stream would become “the” ledger stream. Had they started over, even more history would have been lost. So, there was no real reason to hit the reset button.
XRP runs on a peer-to-peer network. Validators communicate through a gossip protocol, relaying messages without needing direct connections. That system still works. So, practically speaking, missing early ledgers? Does not change anything.
But perception is a different story.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov