XRP Ledger rolled out version 3.2.1 to fix a manifest flood that overwhelmed nodes on July 31. The glitch didn't interrupt transaction processing, but XRPL developers acted fast to patch the vulnerability and prevent future overloads.
The issue stemmed from how the network's nodes handled validator manifests. Before the update, nodes could accept and rebroadcast an unlimited number of manifests from unknown validator keys. This caused excessive resource use, even though it didn’t halt operations.
The new software introduces four key safeguards: rejecting abnormally large manifests, limiting incoming manifest batches, capping bulk manifest data shared with new peers, and restricting storage to manifests from no more than 100 unknown validators. also unknown validator manifests won’t be saved to disk anymore, so any flood of such data clears after a node restarts.
