XRP Ledger Decentralization Debate Reignites After Genesis Ledger Dispute

A long-running debate over the decentralization of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) has flared up again following a public exchange between Bitcoin advocate Bram Kanstein and Ripple CTO David Schwartz. The discussion centers on the origins of the XRP Ledger and whether a historical anomaly undermines claims that XRPL is decentralized.

Kanstein recently reiterated his argument that the XRP Ledger’s publicly available history does not start at “Ledger 1,” but rather at “Ledger 32,570.” According to him, this gap is evidence that XRP has been centralized since its inception. He argues that the absence of the earliest ledgers raises fundamental questions about transparency and control within the network.

David Schwartz, one of the original architects of the XRP Ledger, pushed back strongly against this interpretation. He explained that when XRPL launched in June 2012, a bug in the early server software caused ledger headers from the first week to be improperly saved. As a result, ledgers 1 through 32,569 were permanently lost. Importantly, Schwartz emphasized that while the transaction state of the ledger was preserved and continued forward, the historical data itself vanished, making Ledger 32,570 the effective genesis point for public history servers.

Rather than viewing this as proof of centralization, Schwartz described the incident as an example of decentralized inaction. He noted that no coordinated effort was made to rewrite history or roll back the network. Instead, the community simply accepted the loss of historical data and moved forward, allowing the ledger to evolve organically.

To further counter the criticism, Schwartz compared the XRP Ledger’s genesis glitch with well-known incidents in Bitcoin’s history. He pointed specifically to the 2010 value overflow bug, which resulted in a coordinated rollback of the Bitcoin blockchain. According to Schwartz, such interventions demonstrate a higher degree of centralization than what occurred during XRPL’s early days, since Bitcoin’s stakeholders actively intervened to fix a critical flaw.

The renewed debate highlights ongoing tensions between Bitcoin maximalists and XRP supporters, particularly around issues of decentralization, immutability, and governance. As discussions around blockchain transparency and network control continue to shape the crypto industry, the XRP Ledger genesis controversy remains a focal point in broader conversations about what true decentralization really means.