Ripple’s Legal Challenges and Recent XRP Ledger DDOS Attack

The XRP Ledger (XRPL), a prominent network backed by Ripple, is reportedly experiencing a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. 

This news comes amid ongoing discussions about Ripple’s legal uncertainties and their implications for the broader cryptocurrency market.

Ripple Legal Challenges

In 2020, Ripple faced a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), accused of selling XRP without proper registration. Judge Analise Torres ruled in July 2023 that XRP was a security when sold to institutional investors but not to the general public. 

This distinction highlighted the different levels of information available to these investor groups.

Renato Mariotti, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, recently shed light on Ripple’s partial victory and its significance for the SEC’s approach to cryptocurrency in 2024. He emphasized that regulatory uncertainty persists despite the SEC’s loss in this high-profile case. 

“We’re gonna see more of what people call regulation by enforcement from the SEC where they’re fighting in court, not criminal cases, but civil cases against companies with legitimate companies that are actually interested in being compliant and trying to figure out what regulatory framework would be,” Mariotti said. 

XRPL Under DDOs Attack

Meanwhile, the Ripple-backed XRP Ledger has been hit by what appears to be a DDOS attack, as per Magnetic X, a decentralized exchange. 

The attack, characterized by a massive spike in daily transactions from numerous accounts, has disrupted the network’s functionality, slowing its speed considerably. Since December 28, the network has averaged five million transactions. Meanwhile, attackers reportedly burned around 5,000 XRP in network fees daily.

Read more: How To Buy XRP and Everything You Need To Know

Magnetic X revealed a particular strategy used in the attack, involving hundreds of wallets, sending minuscule amounts of XRP. This is now flagged as fraudulent on the XRP blockchain explorer platform Bithomp. Nonetheless, the wallet in question has accumulated over 11,000 XRP, valued at approximately $6,400.

“This negatively affects regular network users as well as blockchain development projects. Nodes start operating slower, and network fees increase by hundreds or even thousands of times! Moreover, these fees sometimes escalate not only for spammers but also for ordinary users,” Magnetic X said.

This disruption hindered applications on the platform from accessing transaction histories and network updates. However, the exchange confirmed that it had resolved the problem through code optimization, node configuration adjustments, and additional resource procurement.