XRPL consensus freezes after removing just 12% of central nodes – but a simple tweak triples XRP defense
A new XRP Ledger study says two or three extra peer connections per participating node can sharply raise the number of nodes a targeted attack must remove to disrupt modeled consensus. Related Asset XRP #5 XRP · $1.38 24-hour change: down 0.86% 24H Down 0.86% 7D Down 6.90% 30D Up 29.90% XRPL consensus depends on enough trusted validators receiving one another‘s messages. A separate peer-to-peer network carries those messages between servers, so extra routes could keep validator traffic moving if an attack removes the network’s busiest hubs. The Aug. 26 arXiv paper tests random K-out augmentation. K is the number of new undirected edges each participating node creates to peers chosen uniformly at random. At 60% participation and K=2, the models quorum critical attack size rose from 11% to 38% when removals targeted the highest-degree nodes. Under an attack ordered by betweenness centrality, which prioritizes nodes that sit on many shortest paths, the threshold rose from 12% to 33%. The second change is 2.75 times the baseline. The metric measures the simulated share of nodes removed before fewer than 80% of the models validators remain together in one connected component. Observed attack cost remains unknown. At 80% and 100% participation, K=3 matched or exceeded the modeled
