AI found a way to create 18 trillion XRP out of nothing

According to Veria Labs, its AI agent discovered a loophole that could create approximately 18 trillion XRP in a single transaction. The company now describes how it prepared a demonstration of the attack. The creators of XRP Ledger confirmed the vulnerability and implemented a fix. They found no evidence of exploiting the bug on the public network.

  • Veria Labs says its AI found the related bugs and prepared a working attack on the test network.
  • The vulnerability allowed the XRP supply limit to be bypassed. The fix has been in effect since September 25.
  • According to the company, a $250,000 reward was awarded for the entry.


The limited supply of cryptocurrency also depends on the correctness of the software. There has been a bug in XRP Ledger for years that allows you to bypass this rule. The strongest thread of this story, however, concerns the discoverer: according to Veria Labs, an artificial intelligence agent found the vulnerability.

AI found errors and prepared a test attack

The company says it directed its agent to the software code running the XRP Ledger. The tool was supposed to find two bugs, combine them and prepare a working demonstration of exploiting the vulnerability.

The trial was conducted locally. According to company co-founder Cayden Liao, people then checked the result before reporting the vulnerability to the network’s creators.

Veria Labs estimates that one properly crafted transaction could have created approximately 18 trillion XRP. For comparison, the initial supply was 100 billion tokens. This is a scale sufficient to challenge the basic economic assumption of this asset.

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The description of the agent’s independent work comes from its manufacturer. The official report confirms the vulnerability itself and its replication by the RippleX team. These two findings must be read separately.

How did the system allow XRP to be created from nothing?

According to the XRP Ledger report, the problem occurred when adding up the value of multiple exchange offers. Too large a sum exceeded the counter’s range and turned into a small value.

Sellers received full payment, but significantly less XRP was deducted from the buyer. The difference created new tokens.

This can be compared to a cash register that pays money correctly to recipients but incorrectly calculates the burden on the payer. Additional control should stop this operation. However, in XRP Ledger it used similar arithmetic and also failed.

The network’s creators indicate that the fundamental error came from code written in 2015. Its launch required deliberately prepared operations. A regular transfer did not result in an accidental reprint.

Emergency fix instead of voting weeks

The vulnerability was reported on September 22. The fix was released on September 25 in xrpld 3.4.1, and the official report was published on October 9.

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As The Block describes, the fix took effect after the servers were updated. The usual procedure of maintaining validation from validators for two weeks was bypassed.

The reason was practical: showing the patch publicly would also reveal the method of attack. Waiting for it to be activated would leave an open loophole for attackers. According to the report, over 80% of validators on the default list were already running the revised version on the day of release.

What does this mean for XRP holders?

The XRP Ledger team reports that it has found no evidence of exploiting the vulnerability on the public network. The described possibility of creating tokens does not mean that trillions of XRP have actually been released into circulation.

For the investor, this story expands the list of risks. The security of your own wallet remains important, but it is also worth keeping an eye on protocol updates and how its creators respond to errors.

AI can speed up the search for vulnerabilities on both sides. Defenders can fix the code in advance. Attackers can find weaknesses faster. The age of the project itself does not provide an answer as to who will get there first.

In this case, the report resulted in a repair. According to Veria Labs, the company received the program’s maximum award: $250,000.