XRP Ledger Adds Delegation for Banks and Stablecoins
The upgrade is meant to help banks and stablecoin issuers separate tasks and compliance while keeping main keys offline. Tokenized assets and Ripple’s RLUSD also get more business use cases on XRPL.
Key Takeaways
- XRP Ledger activated PermissionDelegationV1_1, which lets a main account delegate specific tasks to a helper account without giving up the main keys.
- The feature is mainly meant for companies, banks, and stablecoin issuers that want to separate payments, compliance, and custody of holdings.
- The change got support from more than 80% of trusted validators, while XRPL also warns about a PaymentBurn bug that has not been fixed yet.
XRP Ledger activated a new feature late Thursday that lets an account holder give another account permission to carry out specific tasks without handing over the main account’s keys. The upgrade, PermissionDelegationV1_1, is mainly meant to be useful for companies that want to separate everyday crypto payments and checks while keeping their main holdings offline.
How the Delegation Works
The feature lets a main account assign rights for each task to a helper account. For example, a stablecoin issuer could let a compliance account approve customers, while the main keys stay safely out of reach of an online computer.
The helper then signs with its own keys and can only do what is explicitly allowed. The owner can later change or revoke those rights. Each helper can have up to 10 permissions, and those determine which actions someone can take instead of automatically setting a spending limit.
For banks, that matters because they often already separate tasks like payments and compliance internally. The upgrade makes it possible to enforce that split on the mainchain itself too.
Security and Validators
The change only went through after more than 80% of trusted validators showed support for two weeks. With 35 validators, that means at least 29 votes. According to XRPL Dashboard, the count went live on October 8 after support had fallen below that threshold in September and the timer had to start over.
That fits into a broader trend where the XRP Ledger is being used more for tokenized assets. In the second quarter, according to an Evernorth report, there was an average of $3.72 billion (€3.3 billion) in tokenized assets and $539 million (€482 million) in Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on the network, together worth about $4.26 billion (€3.8 billion).
The new delegation feature should also reduce the risk that one compromised computer gets too much power. Instead of storing one set of keys with broad rights, companies can split up tasks and keep the most important keys offline.
Why This Matters for Europe
For European crypto companies, this is especially interesting because it shows how blockchains are increasingly being built for business use. That matters even more now that tokenized funds and stablecoins are getting more attention outside the U.S. The move could be relevant for firms that work under stricter internal controls but still want to operate onchain.
Meanwhile, the XRP Ledger is still warning about a separate issue around PaymentBurn. That permission should not be used for now until a separate fix is active, because a helper could also create new tokens under certain conditions. Another bug in the vote counting of some servers is also still under review, after it turned out that a server can lose a validator from the count if that validator changes its routine security key.
