Three Separate Ledgers: Binance's XRP Backing, the Stolen Coins, and a Network Patch Still Awaiting Its Cue

Binance has published a verifiable proof-of-reserves attestation covering XRP, giving users a way to confirm that their holdings are backed on a one-to-one basis. The disclosure, announced yesterday, rests on a snapshot taken Saturday and uses cryptographic verification to let customers check coverage for XRP and other included assets. It marks one step in the exchange's cleanup following Thursday's security breach — though it does not close the book on the incident's consequences.

Payouts had already begun moving again before the reserves report landed. Binance started phasing withdrawals back on Sunday, with XRP among the first assets released. That splits the recovery into two distinct tracks: whether balances can be independently verified, and whether customers can actually reach their funds.

On the compensation side, Binance said yesterday it has replenished roughly 95% of the assets affected by the attack. The remaining 5% consists of less liquid tokens still being sourced. Full XRP coverage, in other words, is not the same as a completed refill of everything that was taken — the exchange's operational restart and its remediation of the breach remain separate processes.

Where the Stolen Coins Went

An analysis published yesterday by Elliptic traced all 233 million stolen XRP to six new addresses, where the tokens were still sitting at the time of the report. The transfers do not constitute a sale. They do, however, make clear that restoring customer backing at Binance and the whereabouts of the purloined XRP have to be assessed independently. The breach struck an exchange, not a vulnerability in the XRP Ledger itself.

Broader price pressure proved stubborn even as money flowed into exchange-traded products. US spot XRP ETFs pulled in net inflows of $8.43 million on Thursday, according to media reports, bringing October's total to about $19.33 million — a figure 84% below September's level. Demand through these vehicles persisted through the market shock, then, but at a markedly weaker monthly pace. One positive trading day is thin evidence of a turning point.

A Patch That Waits on Validators

Running alongside all of this is a technical change to the XRP Ledger. Activation of fixCleanup3_4_0 is expected on November 4 at around 14:46 UTC, contingent on validator support holding firm. The amendment most recently drew backing from 33 of the 35 observed trusted validators. That date remains a projection, not an accomplished switchover.

At its core, the fix closes an authorization flaw that could let accounts recreate issued tokens when they are only entitled to destroy them. It also adjusts calculations for vault and lending functions. Issued assets on the network — stablecoins among them — are the exposure; the native XRP supply cannot be altered through this gap. No public report of the flaw being exploited has surfaced.

How fragile the timetable can be became evident on October 22, when a temporary dip in validator backing reset the approval window and pushed the expected activation into November. Sustained consensus is the gating condition, and the next checkpoint is simply whether that consensus endures.

A Second Package, Still on the Drawing Board

Separately, developers floated a package called fixCleanup3_5_0 on Friday. It bundles four changes to authorization rules for tokens carrying access restrictions — adjustments that had not yet been activated on the mainnet. The XRP Ledger Foundation said it was unaware of any outside party exploiting the exemptions, framing the work as protocol hardening rather than a response to a security incident. A proposal is not an effective network change, and this package should not be confused with the fix now nearing activation.

For anyone holding XRP, the useful discipline is to keep three layers apart: Binance's coverage of customer balances, the resting place of the stolen tokens, and the network's technical maintenance. Progress on the exchange does not automatically resolve the other two. The ledger fix, should validators stay the course, would represent genuine technical headway — but on its own it says nothing about where the XRP price goes next.