Ripple CTO Narrates His 15-Minute-Shocking Experience on the XRP Ledger

Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer, David Schwartz, has shed light on a curious anomaly he observed while monitoring his XRPL hub. In a post shared on X, Schwartz described a sudden 15-minute spike in peer round-trip latency that occurred at about 1:59 AM Pacific Daylight Time on August 15, 2025

The unusual event, he explained, revealed performance irregularities that did not affect all peers equally, leaving open questions about its root cause.

The Unusual Latency Spike

According to Schwartz, the anomaly presented itself as a sharp but temporary increase in round-trip latency across certain peer connections. Rather than a uniform slowdown affecting all connections, only certain peers experienced increased latency, suggesting a more localized issue.

During the incident, three peer connections dropped out of 343, and overall traffic dipped slightly, likely reflecting those lost connections.

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This selectivity is what puzzled Schwartz most. “If the hub was the source of the issue, we’d see consistent latency increases across all connections,” he said, suggesting external factors like temporary network disruptions might be to blame.

Monitoring and Instrumentation

Schwartz stressed that the anomaly was detected thanks to new, detailed monitoring he recently enabled on his hub. At present, however, he only has a single day’s worth of granular data. While sufficient to flag the irregularity, it is not enough to determine whether the spike was a one-off event, a recurring phenomenon tied to specific times, or an unpredictable network glitch.

He revealed plans to expand his monitoring setup by incorporating tools such as Grafana and Alloy. These will allow him to gather more comprehensive metrics — from CPU and disk usage to network path traces and per-peer telemetry — making it possible to identify whether issues arise from routing changes, resource contention, or scheduled tasks running in the background.

Possible Causes and Community Input

Following his disclosure, community members and fellow engineers weighed in on possible causes. Suggestions ranged from temporary ISP congestion and BGP routing changes to automated maintenance tasks that might coincide with off-peak hours

Others pointed to the gap between the 90th and 10th percentile latencies, suggesting this indicated sporadic path deterioration rather than a hub-wide capacity issue.

The key takeaway from Schwartz’s post is that the anomaly appeared to be peer-specific, directing suspicion more toward network paths and routing than XRPL’s consensus mechanism or hub software itself.

Broader Implications

For institutions and validators that rely on the XRP Ledger, the episode serves as a reminder of the importance of robust, layered monitoring. Having peer-to-peer visibility and long-term percentile tracking can be crucial in diagnosing irregularities that are otherwise easy to overlook. Advanced telemetry, automated alerts, and periodic traceroutes could help prevent such incidents from disrupting mission-critical infrastructure.

Looking Ahead

Schwartz emphasized that this is an isolated data point, not yet evidence of a recurring problem. He assured the community that he would continue expanding instrumentation and share further insights if patterns emerge. For now, the event underscores both the challenges and the importance of vigilant monitoring in maintaining the resilience of blockchain networks like the XRPL.

By sharing his findings transparently, Schwartz has not only flagged an operational puzzle but also provided the community with a real-world case study on infrastructure-level monitoring.

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