- XRP Ledger ranked last in Kaiko’s blockchain security exam.
- Piracy of supply chain in April has raised concerns concerning the tools of developers.
- A small set of validators and a low decentralization harm the note of XRPL.
You might expect the blockchain behind the third world cryptocurrency would earn the best security points after more than a decade of operation.
But you would be wrong – at least according to the search firm Blockchain Kaiko.
The XRP Ledger, which underlies the XRP token, ranked last for security in the last quarterly classification of the Kaiko blockchain ecosystem, marking only 41 out of 100.
It was the lowest among the 15 blockchains analyzed, dragging the polygon at 44 and stellar at 45, while Ethereum exceeded the category with 83.
The Kaiko classification assesses blockchain networks on five criteria: governance, integration, liquidity, operational efficiency and security.
The security component includes evaluations of operational resilience, decentralization of the validator, the frequency of audit and past incidents to assess the risks of infrastructure.
Although Kaiko has not published individual sub-scores, the main analyst Adam Morgan McCarthy said DL News That “the main problems were the hack earlier this year, a bad coefficient of Nakamoto and a small number of validators”.
The Nakamoto coefficient score is a metric which estimates the number of entities which should be completed to compromise the network, compared to other evidence.
Safety points
In April, a hacker compromised an official software package used by XRPL developers, injecting a malicious code capable of stealing private keys to users.
Although the big book and the Github repository were not affected, the violation endangered users and increased alarms around the security of the XRPL software supply chain.
The relatively low number of network validators and its approach to decentralization are also discord points.
Unlike Ethereum and Solana, which are based on large sets of open validators – more than 1 million and 1,700, respectively – the large XRP book operates with around 190 active validators.
However, only 35 of them are included in its unique nodes list by default – a subset of confidence used by most participants to reach consensus.
Although this design aims to optimize speed and reliability, criticism say that it limits diversity and makes the system more vulnerable to coordinated disturbances.
This limited validator distribution is reflected in the low Nakamoto coefficient coefficient score from XRP Ledger.
The architect XRP Ledger and CTO Ripple David Schwartz did not immediately respond to requests for comments. Ripple also did not respond to requests for comments.
The founders of Ripple have developed XRP. The blockchain now highlights several of the company’s services.
Kyle Baird is the editor of the DL News weekend. Do you have a tip? Email to kbaird@dlnews.com.
