Unlike Bitcoin Ripple nodes keep a ledger instead of a blockchain. This ledger has no history but rather contains the current state of the network. So every few seconds, nodes jointly construct an update to the ledger and use the consensus algorithm to agree on the correct new ledger. The last ledger agreed upon is called the Last Closed Ledger.
So what happens if there is a disagreement among the nodes?
The consensus algorithm allows the network to construct a new Last Closed Ledger even when not all nodes agree. The bits where they disagree are simply left out. I wish my accountant was so accommodating.
What is of interest here is that Ripple nodes are not required to keep a history of previously closed ledgers. They only need the Last Closed Ledger and the newly received transactions in order to participate in the consensus process. That said, most Ripple nodes do keep a certain amount of historical ledgers in order to provide transaction data to clients that have been offline for some time. The nodes can decide themselves how much history they want to store.
But what about the Ripple investor who might wish to interrogate the full node. Just to make sure nothing is amiss.
Well the first thing they’ll find is a missing 32,000 blocks - blocks 0-32569 to be precise. (So it is Ripple a blockchain after all? No.)
It appears there was bug and things got, well lost is too strong a word, shall we just say mis-placed.
Some attempt at reconstruction was made but it seems all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Ripple together again.
But hey don't worry about it. According to Ripple nothing is broken and having no idea what happened in the early days doesn’t really matter. You only need the most recent ledger, not replay all the transactions since genesis (like Bitcoin and others).
Anyway, why would you want all the transactions? Nothing bad happened in the past.
Perhaps that’s claiming more than they ought. We can only say nothing good happened. The rest is a leap of faith – what else do we have in the absence of evidence?
But what we can for certain is the Last Closed Ledger seems to be a free floating entity. But it seems to working form them.
But what if those missing blocks turned up and revealed something bad. Should we be concerned?
Certainty not if you are a banker. Banks use the Ripple protocol, not the XRP token. No Bank, save for a few pilots, actually use the token. It is a speculative token, not a utility token.
As a XRP holder you might want to acquaint yourself with the disconnect between the XRP token and the protocol. XRP token holders might suppose there is a relationship between the partnerships Ripple has with the banks and the XRP token. But the token can go to $0 but the protocol will be fine.
So if the misplaced blocks ever did surface and reveal something bad. Well! It won’t be the banks left holding the bag.
But why should we be surprised. XRP is called the Bank’s Coin.
In the interests of transparency I do hold XRP.
Steve
Thanks to
Reddit.com/r/Ripple
u/sroose, u/ itsnotlupus, u/Sukrim