Ripple CTO David Schwartz has not too long ago addressed a false impression about XRP Ledger’s UNL. A singular node record (UNL) refers to a server’s record of trusted validators.
An X consumer mentioned in a tweet that he was unable to vary trusted validators in his public XRP-GUI pockets, indicating that he was trying to make use of a UNL outdoors that supplied by Ripple. He additionally posed the query, “99% of the inhabitants is reliant on the UNL that Ripple publishes, what’s stopping them from manipulating the UNL?”
The UNL impacts the way in which the community makes ahead progress. Wallets simply observe that. And manipulating the UNL to do what? If nodes do not agree with the validators on their UNL, the community halts.
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 18, 2025
This tweet attracted a response from Ripple CTO David Schwartz, who clarified the essence of UNL to the XRPL community. Schwartz responded that UNL impacts the way in which the community makes ahead progress, and wallets additionally observe this, answering the X consumer’s query of why trusted validators couldn’t be modified.
Squashing considerations a few potential community manipulation, Schwartz added that if nodes don’t agree with the validators on their UNL, the community halts.
Each XRP Ledger server is natively configured with a UNL, which determines which validation votes it listens to and which votes it throws out through the consensus course of.
Why it issues
Every server operator has full management over which validators are included of their UNL.
Nonetheless, if two servers function with completely completely different UNLs, they’re prone to attain completely different conclusions about when ledgers (and the transactions in them) are validated. This might trigger a fork within the community with events on completely different sides unable to mutually agree and transact with each other.
To keep away from forking, servers on XRP Ledger are required to be configured with UNLs which have a excessive diploma of overlap with each other.
To make it simpler to get a special and dependable record of validators that has excessive overlap with others, XRP Ledger makes use of a system of really useful validator lists. At present, the default configuration for XRP Ledger servers makes use of two lists: one printed by the XRP Ledger Basis and one printed by Ripple. The time period default UNL (generally abbreviated dUNL) refers back to the set of validators included in these lists.
