One of the only exchanges listing RaiBlocks, BitGrail, has threatened to delist XRB after a bug prevented users from withdrawing or depositing the cryptocurrency. RaiBlocks has recently gained huge popularity in the crypto world, leading it to become one of the fastest growing cryptocurrencies in December. In only one month, RaiBlocks XRB went from a value of 0.25 USD to a massive 37 USD – a 148x increase. Due to this, investors rushed to the exchanges to get RaiBlocks before it rose even further. Being one of the few exchanges offering XRB, BitGrail received a large influx of new users. This led to a massive increase in trading volume which exposed the bug in the RaiBlocks software; transactions started failing, causing users to grow increasingly panicked.

Users quickly took to social media to blame BitGrail once their transactions stopped being sent or received. BitGrail tweeted stating that the issue was with a RaiBlocks node crashing, not with their service. The owner of BitGrail, @bomberfrancy also added that the issue was that the RaiBlocks node is not stable with large amounts of transactions. Withdrawals and deposits of XRB were suspended in the meantime while a solution was worked on.

The official BitGrail account posted a statement similar to @bomberfrancy, affirming that the problem was on RaiBlocks’ end, while also tagging a group of RaiBlocks developers. In response to this, the RaiBlocks developers suggested a workaround for the problem that would solve any transaction issues while they worked on a fix. The situation seemed to be dealt with, until the BitGrail owner posted a passive-aggressive comment seemingly out of nowhere; he thanked the RaiBlocks developers for “finally” admitting there was a bug. This was just one of a chain of strange comments from @bomberfrancy, who continued tweeting further remarks, even after the RaiBlocks team tried to defuse the situation.

After further discussion with the development team, @bomberfrancy stated that they were ready to remove XRB from their exchange platform for ‘accusing BitGrail without evidence’. The accusations referred to are unclear, as the RaiBlocks development team didn’t make any public tweets or comments that suggested the issue was the fault of BitGrail. The RaiBlocks community, unsurprisingly, responded negatively to this threat, with many users on Twitter writing that they will be moving their XRB to another exchange as soon as possible. This is also quite a strange threat for BitGrail to make, as XRB still accounted for 88% of the exchange’s traded volume in the 16 hours following the suspension of deposits and withdrawals. RaiBlocks, without a doubt, is currently a large source of income and new users for the BitGrail exchange.

16 hours after the RaiBlocks developers suggested a workaround to BitGrail, the issue still wasn’t resolved and transactions were still suspended. It’s not clear if the suggested fix didn’t work, or if BitGrail just didn’t implement it. Either way, both parties seem to have come to an understanding and are set on resolving the problem. Both BitGrail and RaiBlocks have tweeted that they are working closely on the issue and will get the services restored as soon as possible. This cooperation, though, may not be enough to convince some users to return to BitGrail. RaiBlocks has also clarified that any funds currently in limbo are safe and will be sent/received as soon as the issue is fixed – so don’t worry if your XRB is missing!

This whole situation should hopefully be valuable for both RaiBlocks and BitGrail. RaiBlocks were able to discover and fix a problem in their software before being listed on a bigger exchange, such as Binance, where the fallout could have been much worse. BitGrail, on the other hand, were hopefully able to learn about customer support and social media PR. If they had worked with RaiBlocks from the beginning instead of attacking them, they could have retained their users and potentially attracted many more.