In a recent tweet, XRPScan, a popular XRP Ledger Explorer, issued a critical warning to the XRP community. The alert responded to speculations of an XRP account allegedly affiliated with the U.S. Treasury.
In its tweet, XRPScan addressed these concerns: “A statement on the widely shared XRP account purporting to be a U.S. government-affiliated account. We request the community to do their own due diligence before trusting, buying, or selling tokens on the public ledger.”
A statement on the widely shared XRP account purporting to be a US Government affiliated account.
We request the community to do their own due-diligence before trusting, buying or selling tokens on the public ledger.
As with any other public blockchain, anyone can create an…
— XRPScan (@xrpscan) January 22, 2025
As with any other public blockchain, anyone can create an account on XRPL and set the fields to whatever they like. XRPScan reiterated that explorers serve as neutral platforms that do not censor information unless absolutely necessary.
In response to the recent concerns, XRPScan disclosed it had taken the precautionary measure of flagging the suspect account as spam.
XRP community reacts
The statement from XRPScan follows recent speculations on X that the U.S. Treasury may have created an account on the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
The XRP community sought to verify this, sparking various discussions that caught the attention of Wietse Wind, a prominent XRPL developer, and Ripple CTO David Schwartz, who made some key clarifications.
According to Wietse Wind, the domain field is a public field on a blockchain account that anyone can enter anything into. Tokens can be issued by anybody, and KYC can be completed by anyone. “If KYC has been successfully done, doesn’t have to mean someone is affiliated with something,” Wind added, expressing uncertainty that the said account truly belonged to the U.S. Treasury.
Along these lines, Wind offers a crucial tip and a warning: “On public infrastructure, with public data, the solution is to not take everything at face value, but to verify. Don’t trust: verify.”
Ripple CTO David Schwartz commented along these lines, explaining how to make a provable connection between an account and its domain owner.
“The Domain field can only be set by the account owner. The TOML file can only be set by the domain owner. So if they match, that’s a provable connection,” the Ripple CTO stated, while demonstrating how to determine whether an XRP account is owned by the domain it claims to belong to.
