XRP Ledger adds new controls for banks, stablecoins and tokenized funds

What it is

XRPL's PermissionDelegationV1_1 activated Oct. 8, 2026, after an earlier countdown reset in September when validator support slipped below the required threshold. Upgrade activation requires over 80% support from the 35 trusted validators (29+) sustained for two straight weeks.

How it works

Delegation lets an account owner authorize a separate helper account to perform specific actions (e.g., customer approval, payments) using the helper's own keys, while the owner's primary keys stay offline. The owner can grant, change, or revoke up to 10 permissions per helper, and these restrict action type only — there is no spending cap. The PaymentBurn permission is meant to let a helper destroy issued tokens; under certain conditions it can instead let that helper create new issued tokens.

A separate consensus-counting bug (reported Oct. 8) causes some servers to drop a validator from their vote tally after that validator performs a routine security key rotation — even though the validator remains online and voting. A server that loses track of two validators measures support against 33 rather than 35, making a proposal appear closer to the 80% threshold on that server's count than it actually is.

flowchart TD
    A[Validator rotates security key] --> B{Server tracks by old key?}
    B -->|Yes, bug present| C[Validator dropped from count: 33 denominator]
    B -->|No, patched| D[Validator counted: 35 denominator]
    C --> E[Proposal appears closer to 80% than reality]

Preconditions / Affected

• The PaymentBurn flaw affects tokens issued on the ledger (IOUs/stablecoins/tokenized assets), not newly minted XRP.
• The vote-counting bug affects any server observing a validator that has recently rotated its routine security key.
• Network held an average $3.72B in tokenized assets and $539M in RLUSD during Q2, per Evernorth — context for what's at stake on the ledger.

What to do

• Do not delegate the PaymentBurn permission until the dedicated fix activates. As of Friday (Oct. 8/9), that fix had 27 of 35 validator votes — 2 short of the 29 needed to start its own two-week activation countdown. Other granular permissions are described as unaffected.
• For the vote-counting bug, a proposed patch would have servers identify validators by a permanent ID instead of the key that changes on rotation; this patch is still under review, with no activation figure given.

Caveats

The article does not state a timeline for either fix beyond current vote counts, nor does it confirm whether any helper account has actually exploited the PaymentBurn flaw in practice — the warning is precautionary. Mechanism details for exactly how PaymentBurn flips from burning to minting are not given beyond "under certain conditions."