AI discovers XRP Ledger flaw that could mint 18 trillion tokens and put $94 billion market at risk

What happened

Testing produced spendable XRP, but the disclosure reports no evidence of public-network exploitation and explains why the fix took effect immediately. RippleX later confirmed that no unauthorized XRP was created, no funds were lost, and investigators found no evidence of exploitation on public networks.

The decade-old vulnerability escaped years of security reviews and forced XRP Ledger (XRPL) developers to bypass established governance procedures. An AI agent (AI that carries out multi-step tasks rather than answering one question) uncovered a decade-old XRPL bug that could create trillions of XRP, prompting an emergency fix.

The vulnerability could have let an attacker generate about 18 trillion XRP through a single payment transaction, roughly 180 times the cryptocurrency's original 100 billion token supply, according to security firm Veria Labs. Veria founder Cayden Liao said the flaw potentially threatened XRP's $94 billion market capitalization by undermining the cryptocurrency's fixed supply.

Key facts

• Testing produced spendable XRP, but the disclosure — reports: no evidence of public-network exploitation and explains why the fix took effect immediately