Ripple CTO Ends Speculation on Missing XRP Ledger Blocks: Details

In a recent X conversation, Ripple CTO David Schwartz again addressed speculation about the missing early blocks on XRP Ledger (XRPL).

The clarification comes as skeptics continue to question why the first 32,000 ledgers on XRPL remain missing from public history, a gap that has often fueled speculation about data loss or intentional omission.

In a more recent response to the ongoing speculation, Schwartz dismissed the notion that the missing blocks were intentionally discarded. The Ripple CTO also addressed the question of why the team did not reset the ledger to start fresh.

In response to an X critic who brought up the issue again, asking why the ledger wasn’t reset after, Schwartz stated that there was nothing that could be done to restore the missing data.

“Nothing we could do would restore the missing information. You’re asking why we didn’t throw away even more information by discarding even the blocks that were recovered,” the Ripple CTO answered.

What happened?

XRP Ledger’s record begins at Ledger #32,570, leaving the first 10 days of activity, almost 32,000 ledgers, unrecoverable. David Schwartz, Ripple CTO, responded to a similar speculation in May, clarifying the technical and historical context of the issue.

According to the Ripple CTO, this was a known issue from XRP’s early development days, when multiple ledger streams were being tested.

Schwartz stated that many ledger streams were created in the process of testing and developing the XRPL software. He added that in one of many streams, a software bug caused some ledgers (about 10 days) to be lost.

The Ripple CTO added that while the next ledger reset was expected to make the issue irrelevant, it never happened, as there was never another ledger reset. The team had debated resetting the ledger for cleanliness, but that would have resulted in less public history, as it would have removed everything after the 32,000 ledgers.