The XRP Ledger's Batch amendment has been delayed by at least 10 days after validator support briefly fell below the required threshold, putting its earliest activation at October 9, 2026. The upgrade, formally named BatchV1_1, regained support from 30 of 35 trusted validators on September 25, according to the XRPL amendment dashboard, starting a fresh two-week countdown with the earliest activation at October 9 around 14:46 UTC if support holds. The Batch amendment introduces a new Batch transaction capable of containing up to 8 inner transactions, with execution modes including 'All or Nothing' where every included transaction must succeed or none is applied, and independent modes allowing transactions to execute individually or stop after the first successful or failed transaction. As per CoinDesk, RippleX's head of engineering Ayo Akinyele previously confirmed that projects were being built around Batch, stating that activation would allow work to move closer to production, though he did not name specific partners or provide launch dates.
The European Central Bank has launched Pontes, its new infrastructure for settling tokenized securities in central bank money, with an XRPL-linked platform among the first four DLT operators connected to the system. The Eurosystem confirmed that Pontes went live on September 21 with Axiology, Cashlink, Clearstream and SWIAT among its initial DLT operators. Banks including Deutsche Bank, Santander, Société Générale and the European Investment Bank have also completed onboarding to the system. However, the ECB is not using XRP or the public XRP Ledger - Axiology operates a private, permissioned blockchain built using the open-source code of the XRP Ledger, with only authorized financial institutions able to operate nodes on the network. The distinction matters because XRPL's institutional footprint has already been expanding in other areas, including tokenized Treasury settlement involving Mastercard, Ondo and JPMorgan, while tokenized real-world assets have become an increasingly important part of the network's growth story.
The PermissionDelegationV1_1 feature, which would allow account owners to delegate specific tasks without sharing signing keys, has also been delayed and could activate as early as October 8 around 21:25 UTC. The upgrade lost its qualifying support on September 23 and regained it a day later, moving its earliest activation from October 5 to October 8. According to XRPL documentation, each delegate can receive as many as 10 permissions, which the main account can later change or revoke. A stablecoin issuer could allow an internet-connected compliance system to approve customer accounts to hold its token while keeping the keys with full control offline, while a separate operations account could receive permission to make payments without gaining the power to change those keys or grant authority to somebody else. The feature represents the network's second attempt at introducing this functionality, with the original version containing a critical flaw that could have allowed attackers to drain victims' XRP balances through unauthorized transaction fees.
The amendment faces a critical condition where XRPL validators must maintain support above 80% for the entire activation window. As reported by BigGo Finance, any dip to the threshold or below would trigger a complete reset of the 14-day clock to zero. This means passing the hurdle once is not sufficient – the amendment requires sustained support above 80% for the full activation period to proceed. The distinction is important: September 29 is not a deadline affecting ordinary XRP holders who simply keep tokens in a wallet, but primarily concerns validators, exchanges, API providers and organizations operating their own XRP Ledger infrastructure. Batch had been counting down since September 15 and is already a second attempt at introducing the feature, after developers withdrew the original version over a critical signature-checking flaw before activation. The corrected implementation shipped in August with version 3.3.0 of the software that runs the ledger.
Lauren Berta, Ripple's stablecoin product lead, emphasized the compliance benefits for regulated issuers, stating that this separation of duties is standard practice for stablecoin issuers operating on other blockchains. The RLUSD team has already begun building and testing the functionality in a development environment, with Berta disclosing that the $RLUSD team was building and testing against the functionality on devnet in parallel, highlighting significant institutional interest in the feature. The Permission Delegation feature enables stablecoin issuers to delegate specific actions to separate accounts while keeping the issuer account secure, allowing different teams to handle different functions like asset movement, compliance enforcement, and security management. Additionally, RippleX engineer Mayukha Vadari described use cases for blackhole accounts where delegation could manage account domains before permanent key locking, ensuring users retain control over certain settings even after blackholing their issuer accounts.
