The XRP Ledger has reached a 14-year milestone, tracing its genesis to June 2, 2012, making it one of the oldest continuous blockchains in the crypto space—predating Ethereum by roughly three years. In the lead-up to this anniversary, the network saw a significant uptick in activity. Payment transaction volume on XRPL rose to approximately 1.511 billion XRP, while daily transactions surged 35.3% from the previous quarter, reaching 2.48 million. The strong on-chain metrics underscore the ledger’s enduring relevance despite broader market volatility.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse publicly celebrated the occasion, calling it “the honor of his lifetime” to be part of the XRP family and thanking developers, validators, businesses, and the community. However, the anniversary ignited a fresh debate over the token’s true birthday. A critic argued that pre-December 2012 XRP no longer exists on the modern ledger. Ripple CTO David Schwartz defended the network’s continuity, comparing the evolution to a bank updating its accounting system or Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake. The conversation also highlighted a technical gap: a server bug erased headers for the first 32,569 ledgers, meaning the earliest fully verifiable ledger dates only to December 2012. This lost data fuels the argument that the current incarnation of XRP effectively began at that later point, not in June.
