The fallout from the XRP Ledger’s BatchGate scare is turning into a broader argument about who is actually responsible for protocol safety and how much scrutiny major amendments should face before they get anywhere near mainnet. In a statement published Monday, longtime validator operator Daniel Keller said the near-miss around XLS-56 exposed “a systemic failure in review processes” and prompted him to withdraw support for all amendments currently under consideration.
XRP Ledger Governance Concerns, With Ripple in FocusFor Keller, the episode was not an isolated mistake but the latest example of a deeper structural problem. “The dUNL is not a free code-review or protocol-auditing body. Expecting validators to spend dozens of unpaid hours reviewing complex amendment code was never part of the design and never will be,” he wrote. “Instead, parties proposing amendments should be required to deliver comprehensive documentation, test suites, security analyses, and formal proofs upon request. If you want my vote, prove the change is safe and beneficial.”
Keller’s immediate response was blunt: withdraw all current “Yay” votes, except for pending fixes, and refuse to upgrade to rippled 3.1.1 unless staying on the earlier version risks removal from the network. He also said the fact that an independent researcher and an AI tool were ultimately needed to prevent harm underscored how thin the current safety net has become.
Other prominent XRPL voices agreed that the process needs to change, though not all backed a slowdown. Vet, a well-known XRPL validator, called the Batch incident “a massive opportunity” for the community and the XRPL Foundation to rethink how the protocol evolves. He argued for a slower amendment schedule, more paid reviews, multiple audits for larger changes, “attackathons” on testnet, and a bug bounty program big enough to attract elite researchers.
Keller, however, pushed back on the idea that the answer is simply to move slower. “In the short term, we need some sort of agreement with Cantina. They have proven themself and it’s the best we have right now,” he wrote. “Mid-term, the bug bounties need to be elevated and pay serious money. First, people need to be incentivised to look at the code; second, it must pay off to do a responsible disclosure.”
He went further in a follow-up that captured the mood of the debate: “I do not want to slow down our dev speed; it took us years to get to the current level, and we are still slow. More resources need to be allocated, and the process needs to start yesterday.”
At press time, XRP traded at $1.3566.
