Validators Are About to Vote on the XRP Ledger’s Biggest Upgrade in Years

After a quiet stretch for new development, the XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) Ledger is about to put its biggest set of new features in years to a vote. In roughly two weeks, the validators who control what changes on the network are expected to start deciding whether to approve it.

The security work behind it took so much effort that it put the rest of the ledger’s development on hold for months, according to a prominent XRPL validator called Vet. At the center of the release are two major features that would be some of the biggest changes to the ledger since it launched.

Here’s what the upgrade includes, and whether it’s likely to pass.

What’s in the XRP Ledger Upgrade?

The latest upgrade to the XRP Ledger packs in five new features, but two of them are the ones that really change what the network can do. The first is called Batch. Right now, every action on the XRP Ledger is its own separate transaction. Swapping tokens, sending XRP, buying an NFT, adding money to a liquidity pool, each one needs its own signature, its own fee, and its own confirmation.

Batch lets several of these actions run together as a single transaction that either all succeeds or all fails. Nothing is left half-finished, so a person can’t end up with a broken offer or a payment that went through when the step it depended on didn’t. XRPL validator Vet called it the fix for one of the ledger’s longest-standing problems.

The second is Confidential Transfers, and it may be the bigger deal of the two upgrades. Today, the XRP Ledger is fully public, so anyone can see the amounts moving between accounts. But for a business, that alone rules the ledger out. The new feature will hide the amounts on tokenized assets—the ones issued as Multi-Purpose Tokens—using zero-knowledge proofs, a way of confirming a transaction is valid without revealing the numbers behind it. 

Balances stay private, while issuers and auditors can still be given access to check them. A company won’t move serious money on a network where every competitor can watch, and it can’t run payroll on-chain if anyone can see what each person earns. The ledger already holds over a billion dollars in tokenized assets, and this feature is built to grow that figure.

The other three upgrades are smaller but still useful. Sponsored Fees and Reserves lets one party cover the fees and reserve for another, so someone can start using the ledger without first owning XRP. Permission Delegation lets an account hand off specific permissions to another without giving up full control. And Dynamic MPTs let token issuers change certain properties of a token after it has been created, instead of locking everything in at the start.

The Security Flaw That Nearly Broke the XRP Ledger’s Batch Upgrade

Back in February, the original version of Batch was already up for validator approval when a serious bug turned up. An autonomous security tool called Apex, built by Cantina AI, working alongside researcher Pranamya Keshkamat, found a flaw in the way Batch checked signatures. 

In the wrong hands, it would have let an attacker move funds out of any account on the network without ever needing that account’s private key. On a live network, that could have been catastrophic.

The flaw was caught while Batch was still in review, before it ever went live, so no real funds were at risk. Validators were advised to reject the amendment, and an emergency software release pulled it out of the code entirely. The scare then reshaped the whole roadmap, since the security work that followed is what put everything else on hold for months.

The rebuild was thorough, as the team put the new version through an attackathon, which is a full security audit, and four separate reviews before folding it back into the code. When it was done, core developer Denis Angell announced that “Batch is BACK,” merged into the repository and ready for validator voting in the next release.

How XRP Ledger Validator Voting Works

The way the XRP Ledger approves a change is unlike almost any other blockchain. It doesn’t change because a company decides so, and there are no token holders casting votes. Instead, the network runs on a trusted set of 35 validators, and they are the ones who decide whether a change goes live.

For an amendment to activate, at least 28 of those 35 validators, more than 80%, have to support it, and they have to hold that support for two straight weeks. If the backing drops below the set bar at any point, even briefly, the two-week clock starts over. And running the new software isn’t the same as voting yes, either, since a validator can install the update and still vote against the change.

The system is working on a smaller change right now. A maintenance amendment called fixCleanup3_2_0 picked up support from 30 of the 35 validators this month, about 86%, and cleared the two-week threshold, so it is set to go live around July 29.

But getting to a vote doesn’t mean passing it. The ledger’s lending upgrades have been open for weeks and are still stuck near 20% support, far below what they need. There is no deadline forcing a decision, so a vote can drag on for months, and some amendments never pass at all.

When Could the XRP Ledger Upgrade Go Live?

The upgrade is expected to reach validators in about two weeks, but when it goes live depends entirely on how quickly they line up behind it. If support builds fast enough and holds above 80% for two full weeks, activation could follow within weeks of the vote opening. But if validators drag it out, it could stretch into months. 

One encouraging sign is that most trusted validators had already moved to the new software by early July, so the groundwork is further along than it looks. Each upgrade the XRP Ledger adds fills in another gap institutions worry about before they will move major assets on-chain. 

Credentials, permissioned domains, a lending framework, and now privacy and bundled transactions have all done exactly that. So, the XRP Ledger is being built into serious financial infrastructure one validator vote at a time, and this is the biggest of those votes in years.

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