The XRP Ledger (XRPL) community was wondering what happened to the first 32,569 ledger entries. In permanent record keepings starting at Ledger 32,570, these early blocks were not published for many years. Critics are not noticed.
For some, the missing data spurs claims that crypto companies that use XRP in their operations, or XRPL development teams, could deliberately wipe out early transactions, possibly hiding activity or gaining benefits. XRP is not truly decentralized and is often cited in arguments that Ripple has too much control over the network.
Currently, Ripple CTO and XRPL co-creator David Schwartz is stepping in to get things done. According to Schwartz, the missing Ledgers dates back to the earliest development and testing date of XRPL.
When the software was shaped, multiple ledger streams were created, and a bug in one of those streams caused the ledger to be lost for about 10 days. The recovery efforts have regained everything but the first 32,569 blocks.
During the software testing and development process, I created many ledger streams. In one of the many streams, some ledgers (about 10 days) were lost due to a software bug. Everything except the first 32k was collected. I hope that the next ledger will reset and cause problems…
– David ‘Joelkatz’ Schwartz (@Joelkatz) May 5, 2025
At the time, the team hoped to reset their ledgers again soon, making lost history irrelevant. But that reset never happened. They thought about wiped the ledger and cleaning things up, but that removed more history, so they left it as is.
It appears that the mystery of the missing block has finally been solved. The loss was not intentional and involved no manipulation of any kind. It was a one-off thing related to the experimental phase of XRPL’s launch.
