Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse celebrated on social media his 14th anniversary of involvement in the XRP ecosystem, thanking developers, validators, businesses, and community members. His remarks subsequently reignited the longstanding debate over how XRP’s “birthday” should be calculated.
The dispute traces back to 2012.
Some community members believe that the June anniversary does not accurately correspond to the XRP still in use today. They argue that the modern XRP's origin should be traced to December 23, 2012, rather than the network's initial launch in June.
This perspective is based on the fact that the current ledger history cannot be fully traced back to the initial stage. Due to missing early data, transaction records from the network's first few months can no longer be continuously verified.
The earliest verifiable ledger is 32570.
The article states that after the Ripple network launched in June 2012, the earliest ledger data can no longer be fully restored. The first ledger in the system that can be fully verified is ledger number 32,570.
The missing interval covers approximately seven months, from June to December 2012. As a result, some critics argue that XRP, in the modern sense, should be considered to have begun at the earliest continuous and verifiable point in the ledger's history.
Schwartz defends network continuity
In response to this claim, Ripple CTO David Schwartz stated that a change in the ledger system does not mean the assets themselves have become something different. He used the analogy of a bank switching its accounting system, explaining that the continuity of funds is not lost in the process.
He also noted that after Ethereum transitioned from PoW to PoS, ETH did not become a different token. By this logic, even if there were gaps in XRP’s early ledger, the current XRP should still be considered the same asset as the early XRP.
Community disagreements still revolve around the definition.
The disagreement in this discussion primarily centers on how to define the "birth time." One side emphasizes the historical moment when the network was first launched, while the other side focuses on whether the ledger has maintained a continuous and verifiable history from a specific point onward.
The absence of early ledgers has become a recurring technical backdrop to this debate. Each anniversary milestone reignites discussion within the XRP community around this issue.