👀: The first 20,000 blocks (more accurately, ledgers) of the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which include the genesis block, are part of a larger set of approximately 32,570 ledgers (from ledger 1 to 32,569) that are missing from the public record due to a server bug in the network’s early days in 2012. This issue, which occurred shortly after the XRPL’s launch by David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb, and Arthur Britto, resulted in the loss of these early ledger headers due to uniform server configurations causing simultaneous memory depletion. As a result, ledger 32,570 is the earliest recorded ledger available on the XRPL.

There has been no definitive recovery of these missing ledgers, and they are considered permanently lost, as attempts to reconstruct them have been unsuccessful. This absence obscures the initial transactions and token distributions, including the creation of the 100 billion XRP tokens, 80 billion of which were allocated to Ripple (then OpenCoin) and the remainder to the founders. Ripple’s CTO, David Schwartz, has stated that the loss does not affect the current state of accounts or network security, as the XRPL only requires the most recent ledger to function, unlike blockchains like Bitcoin that rely on a complete transaction history. However, the missing ledgers have fueled skepticism about transparency, with critics speculating about potential hidden token allocations or foul play, though no evidence supports these claims.