XRP Ledger Just Gave Banks a Powerful New Security Tool

TLDR

• The XRP Ledger activated the PermissionDelegationV1_1 upgrade on October 8, letting account owners assign specific tasks to other accounts without sharing private keys.
• Each account can delegate up to 10 permissions, covering tasks like payments and trustline management, while keeping master keys offline.
• The upgrade replaces an earlier version that had a bug and now follows the XLS-75 technical standard.
• Users are told not to delegate the PaymentBurn permission yet, since a separate fix for it is still pending validator approval.
• XRPL held about $4.26 billion combined in tokenized assets and Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin during the second quarter.

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The XRP Ledger switched on a new upgrade late Thursday that changes how businesses manage their crypto accounts. The feature is called PermissionDelegationV1_1, and it activated on October 8.

JUST IN: $XRP Ledger adds new controls for banks, stablecoins and tokenized funds. pic.twitter.com/EaUPRXdV8m

— Whale Insider (@WhaleInsider) October 9, 2026

The upgrade lets an account owner give another account permission to handle specific jobs. This happens without sharing the keys that control the main account.

Validators are the operators who confirm transactions on the network. Upgrades need support from more than 80% of them for two straight weeks before going live. With 35 validators currently active, that meant at least 29 needed to agree.

This vote had failed once before. Support dropped below the needed level in September, which reset the countdown.

Why Businesses Need This Feature

Companies that handle crypto transactions daily need their signing keys ready at all times. But keeping powerful keys on a computer connected to the internet raises the risk if that computer gets hacked.

Delegation solves this by splitting up authority. A stablecoin issuer, for example, can let a compliance account approve new customers. Meanwhile, the main keys that control the whole account stay offline and safe.

The helper account signs transactions using its own keys. It can only do what it has been given permission to do. The owner can change or cancel those permissions at any time.

Each helper account can receive up to 10 permissions. These limit what kind of actions the account can take, rather than setting a dollar limit on spending.

Banks already split up payment and compliance duties among different staff members. This upgrade gives businesses a way to build those same divisions directly into the blockchain.

What the Upgrade Replaces

The new code replaces an earlier version of Permission Delegation that had a bug. The updated version now follows a technical spec called XLS-75.

Ripple’s stablecoin product lead, Lauren Berta, said the feature helps institutions that already separate roles across teams. Compliance staff approve transfers, treasury staff handle big payments, and legal teams review trustlines, all without giving any single person full control of the account.

Not every function can be delegated. The system blocks delegates from expanding their own permissions, so a helper account cannot grant itself more power than it already has.

There is one exception users need to know about. Official guidance says not to delegate the PaymentBurn permission until a separate fix is active. Under certain conditions, this permission could allow a helper to create new tokens instead of only destroying them. This warning applies to tokens issued on the ledger, not newly minted XRP itself.

A fix for that issue already has 27 of the 35 validator votes needed. It requires 29 votes to start its own two-week countdown.

Developers also found a separate bug affecting how some servers count validator votes. Some servers can mistakenly drop a validator from their count after it changes a routine security key, even though the validator is still online and voting. This could make a proposal appear closer to passing than it actually is on that server’s count. A proposed fix would have servers track validators by a permanent ID instead.

The ledger held an average of $3.72 billion in tokenized assets and $539 million in RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, during the second quarter. Combined, that totals about $4.26 billion.