A decade-old vulnerability was discovered in the XRP Ledger that could let attackers mint trillions of XRP out of thin air. Developers skipped the usual voting process and issued an emergency patch, fixing it within three days.
This was the first time in XRPL’s ten-year history that an amendment vote was bypassed. It usually claims to be fully decentralized, but when something goes wrong, it patches things behind closed doors—and by the time you hear the word “emergency,” the rules have already changed.
It’s fortunate the vulnerability wasn’t exploited, but the incident has put an old question back on the table: when it comes to governance on supposedly decentralized networks, is the code in charge, or are the core developers?
This was the first time in XRPL’s ten-year history that an amendment vote was bypassed. It usually claims to be fully decentralized, but when something goes wrong, it patches things behind closed doors—and by the time you hear the word “emergency,” the rules have already changed.
It’s fortunate the vulnerability wasn’t exploited, but the incident has put an old question back on the table: when it comes to governance on supposedly decentralized networks, is the code in charge, or are the core developers?