A ledger fork in the Stellar network sparked debate over the Ripple consensus protocol's safety. Stellar Development Foundation attributed the incident to protocol flaws, while Ripple Labs disputed the claims, arguing the issue stemmed from Stellar's modifications to the code.
On December 5th, Stellar Development Foundation executive director Joyce Kim published a blog post detailing an unintended ledger fork that temporarily disrupted the Stellar network's transaction system. The fork caused network nodes to disagree on a common ledger, creating duplicate transaction histories and resulting in lost customer funds on at least one exchange. Stellar attributed the problem to flaws in the Ripple consensus protocol, which both Stellar and Ripple Labs use for their transaction networks. Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas contested these conclusions, arguing the issues arose from Stellar's modifications to the protocol rather than the protocol itself. In response, Stellar announced plans to accelerate development of a replacement consensus protocol led by Stanford University's David Mazières, while temporarily running the network on a single verifying node to prevent further forks.