Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz provided a rare look at how the XRP Ledger could react if it ever comes under pressure from an actor at the state level.
The discussion began with the question of whether an authoritarian regime could use or attack the XRP Ledger by targeting its network of validators. Schwartz did not rule out the risk entirely and, according to him, if the pressure becomes severe enough, the XRP Ledger could be reorganized around a more resilient validation structure.
State-level attacks can only disrupt XRPL temporarily
The XRP Ledger has operated without major outages on more than 70 million closed ledgers, but this reliability record may soon be tested in ways its creators never anticipated, one of which could be authoritarian regimes and state-level interference.
Schwartz recognized that the threat posed by state actors to blockchain networks is real. State-level actors, he said, could cause temporary disruptions to blockchains, including the XRP Ledger, but long-term damage is another matter entirely. The answers have been made to a question about social media platform
However, according to Ripple’s CTO Emeritus, long-term control of external forces it would be much more difficult whether the broader XRPL community remains active enough to respond. The validators run by Ripple represent less than 20% of the total network, meaning that any attack focused on Ripple’s own infrastructure would leave the entire set of validators intact.
THE The survival of the XRPL network In this type of scenario, it would depend less on whether a validator is attacked and more on the network’s ability to continue replacing compromised or pressured operators. The attack would only become truly serious if a hostile actor could make people too scared to resort to validators.
How the XRP Ledger Reorganization Will Affect the Network
Schwartz also described a possible longer-term change to XRPL’s consensus structure in the event of an attack by an authoritarian regime. His example was a two-layer consensus algorithm, in which the inner layer will handle normal network activity and the outer layer will only come into play when the network needs to modify the inner layer’s unique node list (UNL).
Internal validators would ensure the day-to-day operation of the XRP Ledger. If these validators were attacked or compromised, the effect would be minimal, as they would be easily replaced. External validators would play a lighter, less frequent role, primarily stepping in when changes are needed across the validator set.
Targeting external validators would also be more difficult because they would not need to constantly operate in the same visible way. They could remain lightweight, appearing only when needed, and operating through anonymization services such as Tor or I2P.
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