Ripple CTO David Schwartz was recently part of a discussion on X (formerly Twitter), which sought to understand the concept of blockchain immutability. This was in the context of the lost transactions on the XRP Ledger and missing blocks on the Ethereum blockchain.
An X user sought to understand the concept of immutability and asked the Ripple CTO about it. This tweet drew the attention of the XRP community, including a popular blockchain explorer, XRP Scan, and the Ripple CTO, who joined the discussion.
Immutability is regarded as one of the core, defining properties of a blockchain. It is a trait in which something, once created, cannot be changed.
According to XRPScan, while immutable data cannot be changed, it may be destroyed but cannot be mutated. This prompted further questions by the X user on how data could be destroyed if it is immutable.
If I give you a cryptographically-secure hash of some data, then that data is immutable. Any change in the data would not match the hash. But that doesn’t mean anybody knows what the data actually is. There are some early XRPL transactions that are immutable but known.
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) September 16, 2024
Schwartz proceeded to answer this question by saying: “If I give you a cryptographically-secure hash of some data, then that data is immutable. Any change in the data would not match the hash. But that doesn’t mean anybody knows what the data actually is.”
In the context of the XRP Ledger, Schwartz added: “There are some early XRPL transactions that are immutable but known.”
XRP Ledger history
In 2011, three engineers — David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto — began developing XRP Ledger (XRPL). The ledger was initially launched in June 2012.
The earliest ledger available is 32570, which dates back to the first week of XRPL’s history; ledgers 1 through 32569 were lost due to a mishap in 2012.
Because the XRP Ledger’s state is recorded in every ledger version, XRP Ledger has continued without the missing history, with its functionality unimpacted by this occurrence.
In January this year, the Ripple CTO clarified this, noting, “There are no transactions in the XRP ledger genesis block. But there were 534 transactions in the first 32,570 ledgers, and those transactions are presumed lost.”
