From CoinDesk · By Shaurya Malwa
The XRP Ledger activated PermissionDelegationV1_1 on Oct. 8, allowing account owners to authorize other accounts to perform specific tasks without sharing their primary keys.
The feature lets businesses enforce divisions between functions such as payments and compliance, though each delegated account is limited by action type rather than a spending cap.
Users are advised not to delegate the PaymentBurn permission until a separate fix activates because a flaw could allow helpers to create issued tokens instead of only destroying them.
The XRP Ledger switched on a feature late Thursday that lets an account owner give another account permission to do specific jobs without handing over the keys that control the account.
The feature, called PermissionDelegationV1_1, activated on Oct. 8, according to monitoring site XRPL Dashboard. Upgrades require more than 80% support from trusted validators, the operators who confirm transactions, for two straight weeks. With the current list of 35, that means at least 29 supporters.
Delegation’s countdown reset in September after support slipped below that level, as CoinDesk reported.
Businesses making routine crypto transactions need signing keys available throughout the day, but keeping keys with broad powers on an internet-connected computer increases the damage a hacker could cause if that computer is compromised.
A concept called delegation lets them divide that authority by job. A stablecoin issuer can allow a compliance account to approve new customers while keeping its main keys offline. The helper signs with its own keys, can perform only the actions it has been granted, and the owner can change or withdraw those permissions.
Each helper can receive up to 10 permissions. These restrict the kinds of actions it can perform, rather than automatically imposing a spending cap.
Banks already separate payment and compliance duties among staff. The upgrade gives businesses a way to make those divisions enforceable on the ledger itself. coindesk.com
The network held an average of $3.72 billion in tokenized assets and $539 million in Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin during the second quarter, according to a report shared with CoinDesk by Evernorth, an XRP treasury company. Together, those balances amounted to about $4.26 billion.
Read More: XRP Ledger retries upgrade that lets banks split payment and compliance duties
Meanwhile, official guidance tells users not to delegate PaymentBurn, which is intended to let a helper destroy tokens, until a separate fix activates. Under certain conditions, that permission also allows the helper to create new tokens. The warning concerns tokens issued on the ledger, rather than newly minted XRP. Other granular permissions are unaffected.