XRP Ledger to Activate a Fix Addressing Permission Delegation Vulnerability

CoinCircle (120btC.coM): On the evening of November 4, Beijing time, the distributed ledger network XRP Ledger is expected to officially activate a critical underlying protocol fix aimed at completely closing a loophole in the Permission Delegation mechanism that allows for unauthorized access. According to the official technical architecture design, this feature allows the main account to authorize specific on-chain instructions to independent proxy accounts for step-by-step execution. For example, compliant stablecoin issuers can delegate clearing partners to implement token destruction when customers redeem stablecoins for fiat currency.

However, the code exhibited a rare execution deviation in granular permission isolation:

• Permission Overreach Mechanism: The system originally set "destruction" and "issuance" as two strictly independent asymmetric operational permissions. However, under the old mechanism, a proxy account authorized only to destroy tokens could initiate a specific deduction instruction that crosses the zero balance threshold. The system not only failed to reject this excessive transaction but also inadvertently triggered unauthorized issuance logic;

• Affected Asset Scope: The potential risk is primarily concentrated on two asset formats: Trust Line Tokens and Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPT). All compliant stablecoins issued on this public chain fall into this category, but this defect does not affect the established issuance rules and total supply of native XRP;

• Emergency Prevention Guidelines: Before the underlying patch officially takes effect, the XRP Ledger official technical team has issued risk control alerts to all asset issuing institutions, recommending that relevant institutions suspend granting destruction authorization to external intermediaries until the code takes effect. As of now, no actual attack cases exploiting this vulnerability have been detected on-chain, and the official has not disclosed a specific list of affected issuers.

Countdown to Consensus Reset for Validation Nodes

In terms of technical deployment and on-chain consensus, this permission fix has been packaged into a comprehensive amendment named fixCleanup3_4_0, which was initially distributed across the network with the xrpld 3.4.0 node client released in September. According to the new code specifications, if a proxy account holding only destruction permissions submits any payment call that breaks the zero balance threshold again, the network nodes will directly execute a transaction rejection, and issuance operations will be required to present independent issuance private key authorization.

According to the unique decentralized governance rules of XRP Ledger, any amendments to the underlying protocol must cross stringent consensus thresholds:

• Voting Threshold and Cycle: The core validator cluster responsible for ledger accounting and block confirmation across the network must maintain over 80% support for two consecutive weeks for the new rules to take effect across the network;

• Historical Support Rate Fluctuations: This amendment was originally scheduled to take effect on October 23. CoinDesk reported that the number of supporting nodes across the network briefly dropped to 26 on October 21, causing the system to automatically reset the two-week countdown, delaying the effective date across the network by nearly two weeks;

• Latest Consensus Progress: On-chain analysis platform XRPScan monitoring data shows that among the 35 core validator nodes in the network, 33 validators have cast votes in favor, with a support rate of 94.3%. The amendment is expected to automatically activate at 22:46 Beijing time on November 4.

Underlying Governance Continues to Maintain a Cautious Compliance Tone

In addition to focusing on blocking the risk of unauthorized token issuance, the fixCleanup3_4_0 amendment also integrates multiple deep repair measures related to on-chain financial transactions and clearing stability, mainly covering three core business logic calibrations:

• Market Making Asset Recovery Guarantee: Streamlined and strengthened the technical path for token issuers to compliantly recover specific assets from automated market maker (AMM) trading liquidity pools;

• Treasury Account Precision Alignment: Corrected extreme floating-point calculation errors encountered by end users when performing deposit or withdrawal operations to decentralized treasuries and custodial accounts;

• Loan Default Status Calibration: Fixed state machine errors in on-chain credit matching logic, eliminating the risk of misjudgment where loan contracts are erroneously marked as overdue or in default before the statutory maturity date.

It is worth mentioning that this routine upgrade, which has completed the full consensus cycle, stands in stark contrast to the emergency hard fork in late September this year. At that time, the XRP Ledger security team identified a significant historical vulnerability that had existed for ten years, theoretically allowing the creation of native XRP out of thin air. Given the severe systemic threat, the core team directly launched the xrpld 3.4.1 emergency patch, skipping the two-week routine voting process. This smoothly advancing voting fix indicates that the network has returned to a normalized compliance governance track dominated by thorough validation node checks and time buffers while digesting sudden technical risks.

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