At first glance, XRP is often described as a stable and mature payment-focused blockchain. However, beneath this perception lies a structural risk that must be confronted: under certain conditions, XRP carries a non-theoretical possibility of total asset loss. The core of this risk resides in the mechanism known as manual recovery.

Manual recovery means that, when the network fails to reach consensus, the legitimacy of the ledger is not determined automatically or cryptographically, but instead through human intervention. If a malicious or erroneous actor were to become involved in this recovery process, the consequences would be irreversible. This is the fundamental implication of a system that relies on manual recovery.

This risk is not hypothetical. It materialized in February 2025, when the XRP Ledger (XRPL) experienced an approximately 64-minute network halt. This incident was fundamentally different in nature from conventional “congestion” or ordinary system failures. It was neither a processing delay caused by excessive transaction load, nor an outage clearly attributable to an external attack, nor has it been conclusively identified as a known software bug.

Instead, validations from validators suddenly ceased, and ledger approvals completely stopped progressing. This was not a mere slowdown or backlog; it was a condition in which network consensus itself could no longer be established. In other words, the consensus layer entered a state of functional paralysis.

The recovery process revealed an even deeper issue. Unlike Ethereum’s Proof of Stake or many BFT-based chains, where algorithmic mechanisms automatically converge toward finality, no such automatic convergence occurred on XRPL. Rather, certain UNL operators made a discretionary human judgment that “this ledger is the correct one,” and the entire network was forcibly reverted to that ledger. Consequently, the legitimacy of the final ledger was not established through cryptographic certainty, but through the judgment of specific operational entities.

The post-incident response further amplified these concerns. After the 64-minute halt, Ripple’s CTO, David Schwartz, publicly stated that the exact cause of the incident remained unknown. Since that statement, no final incident investigation report nor any definitive, permanent recurrence-prevention measures have been officially finalized or published. As a result, the most critical questions—why the incident occurred and whether there is any guarantee it will not recur—remain unanswered. This positions the event not as a resolved outage, but as an unresolved major incident.

Despite this unresolved, consensus-level technical risk, Ripple has continued to prioritize acquisitions, business expansion, and the growth of its corporate influence. Ordinarily, a failure affecting the very foundation of a network should demand complete technical disclosure and firmly established preventive measures as the highest priority. Advancing external growth strategies while leaving such fundamental issues ambiguous raises serious concerns from the standpoint of responsible corporate ethics and governance.

Taken together, this series of events demonstrates that the structural fragility inherent in XRPL’s UNL-dependent consensus model—specifically, the risk that ledger legitimacy is not automatically finalized and may instead depend on human intervention—is not merely a theoretical concern. It is a risk that has already manifested in reality. At the same time, this incident exposed significant shortcomings in both technical accountability and corporate governance that cannot be ignored.