XRP Ledger restarts upgrade, allowing accounts to split payment and compliance permissions

The PermissionDelegationV1_1 upgrade of the XRP Ledger entered a 14-day activation countdown on September 21, having received support from 29 of the 35 trusted validator nodes. If the support rate remains above 80% during this period, the upgrade could officially activate as early as October 5 at 11:18 UTC; at least 28 validator nodes must continue to support it, or the countdown will reset.

This feature allows accounts to split permissions by role. For example, a stablecoin issuer can allow a connected compliance system to approve customer accounts holding its tokens while keeping the keys with full control offline; operational accounts can gain payment permissions but cannot change keys or delegate authority to others. Each trustee can have up to 10 permissions, and the main account can modify or revoke them at any time.

This is the network's second attempt to introduce this feature. The original version had vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to make others pay transaction fees with improperly signed transactions, and by repeatedly submitting high-fee transactions, they could deplete the victim's XRP balance. This vulnerability was reported by community testers on September 15, 2025, and validator nodes were advised to reject the amendment, so it was never activated. The fixed version was released with xrpld 3.3.0, changing the way unauthorized transactions are rejected, ensuring that fees are not deducted before signature verification.