Early Mistakes

Archived forums show that the mishap happened due to a “server bug”, resulting in the first week of ledger history disappearing. At the time, David Schwartz wrote “All that was lost was the ledger headers – all the transactions are still available, so there’s some hope that the history may still be recovered”. However, after nearly a decade, they have still not been able to recover the lost data. 

While the missing Genesis block essentially means that there is a void in the XRP blockchain, which effectively obscures the early and most fundamental days of Ripple’s history, it contains the initial creation of all XRP tokens, there has been little doubt about the blockchain’s functioning, vitality, and longevity by investors.

If, for example, XRP were to somehow appear, there would have to be an accepted ledger before the XRP appeared and an accepted ledger after the XRP appeared. All these ledgers would be signed by the majority of validators or they wouldn’t have been accepted. In the first ledger after the XRP appeared, there would either have to be a transaction whose metadata included the increase in XRP or not. If not, then there is 100% conclusive evidence that a stated invariant was broken – an account’s balance may not be changed without a transaction whose metadata shows that change. If so, then there is still 100% conclusive evidence that a stated invariant was broken – an account’s metadata may only change the total XRP in the ledger by destroying its transaction fee (Schwartz, 2013).

While the XRPL has many safeguards in place to prevent events like the aforementioned example from happening, a blockchain like the XRPL that operates without a Genesis block is an anomaly in the entire industry and will continue to cause controversy in the years to come.