XRP traded near $1.40 on Oct. 9, down roughly 1% over 24 hours, as the XRP Ledger switched on an upgrade that gives banks and stablecoin issuers a new way to split duties across accounts. The network activated the PermissionDelegationV1_1 amendment on Oct. 8, and the official XRP Ledger amendment registry now lists the change as enabled on mainnet.
The feature lets an account owner grant another account permission to perform specific jobs — approving customers, processing payments, or handling compliance — without sharing the keys that control the primary account. A stablecoin issuer can keep its main signing keys offline while a separate compliance account approves new users on its behalf.
What Permission Delegation Changes
Permission delegation targets a practical security problem for institutions. Businesses making routine transactions need signing keys available around the clock, but a key with broad powers left on an internet-connected machine expands the damage a hacker could cause if that machine is compromised.
Under the amendment, the owner grants a helper account up to 10 granular permissions, and the helper signs with its own keys. Restrictions apply by action type rather than as a spending cap, and the owner can change or withdraw permissions at any time. The change replaces an earlier PermissionDelegation version that was disabled after a critical bug was discovered, and it implements the XLS-75 standard.
Activation required more than 80% support from trusted validators — at least 29 of the current 35 — held for two straight weeks. The countdown had reset in September when support slipped below that threshold before recovering, a path similar to other recent XRP Ledger upgrades such as the lending protocol amendments in xrpld 3.4.0.
Why Banks and Stablecoin Issuers Care
Banks already separate payment and compliance duties among staff. The upgrade makes those divisions enforceable on the ledger itself, which matters as regulated institutions move more activity onchain. During the second quarter the XRP Ledger held an average of $3.72 billion in tokenized assets and $539 million in Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin — roughly $4.26 billion combined, according to a report from Evernorth, an XRP treasury company.
The delegation model is the latest in a series of XRPL changes aimed at institutions, following the Batch V1.1 amendment RippleX shipped in September after fixing its own critical bug.
Permission delegation also joins a run of institution-facing features the ledger has shipped this year. Permissioned domains and permissioned DEXes went live in February, and token escrow added programmable settlement the same month, extending a push to make the public ledger usable by regulated firms.
The PaymentBurn Warning and What’s Next
The activation comes with an explicit caveat. The registry tells users not to delegate the PaymentBurn permission until a separate fix, fixCleanup3_4_0, is enabled — currently expected Oct. 23. Before that fix, a delegate holding PaymentBurn could also mint new fungible tokens such as trust line tokens or multi-purpose tokens in certain circumstances. Other granular permissions are unaffected.
Developers are also tracking a separate vote-counting bug. A report filed Oct. 8 found that some servers can drop a validator from their count after it changes a routine security key, which can make a proposal look closer to passing than it really is. A proposed patch would identify validators by a permanent ID instead. The PaymentBurn fix held 27 of 35 validator votes at the time of writing, two short of the 29 needed to start the two-week countdown.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is permission delegation on the XRP Ledger?
It lets an account owner grant a helper account limited powers, such as approving customers or making payments, while keeping the primary signing keys offline.
When did PermissionDelegationV1_1 activate?
The amendment was enabled on XRP Ledger mainnet on Oct. 8, 2026, after holding more than 80% validator support for two straight weeks.
Does the upgrade change XRP’s supply or price?
No. It changes how accounts delegate permissions and does not alter XRP issuance. XRP traded near $1.40 on Oct. 9.
