Some tokens on the XRP Ledger are only supposed to sit in accounts their issuer has approved, and developers have found a few ways around that rule.
Issuers of regulated assets, such as stablecoins or tokenized funds, can require approval before anyone holds their tokens, often so they can run identity checks first. That approval sits on the so-termed trust line, or the connection an XRP Ledger account sets up to hold a token issued by someone else.
Four proposed code changes, updated this week, would close the remaining exceptions. All four are bundled into a single network upgrade called fixCleanup3_5_0, and none has been activated on mainnet.
One proposal would require approval for both tokens in a trading pool before an account can buy into it. These pools, called automated market makers, trade tokens automatically, and a share in one is itself a token. Another closes an exemption where the approval check only kicked in on trust lines with a zero balance, so a line that already held tokens could keep receiving more.
The XRP Ledger Foundation said developers have been examining these exceptions, including how tokens could reach unapproved accounts through NFT trades before an August 2025 fix.
“The developer discussion is about what the protocol should guarantee, not a report of affected users,” Hussein “Vet” Zangana, director of community and product at the XRP Ledger Foundation, told CoinDesk in an email.
Any unapproved balances that exist today trace back to payments made by issuers themselves or by accounts they had previously approved, according to Zangana.
The Foundation knows of no balance created by an outsider exploiting the remaining exceptions.
The fixes also add a broader check meant to keep approval rules consistent across current and future XRP Ledger features.
That could matter for anyone holding a restricted token without the issuer’s approval. Under the proposal, those tokens could only be sent back to the issuer, though the issuer could approve the holder later and restore normal use.
“The issuer can approve the holder’s trust line at any time, which restores full use,” Zangana said. “We know of no holder who got such a balance through a trade.”
The Foundation called the work routine hardening of the protocol, unrelated to any security incident.
None of the four changes has been merged into the XRP Ledger’s main software yet. Once they are, fixCleanup3_5_0 still needs backing from more than 80% of the network’s trusted validators for two straight weeks before it switches on.
Read More: XRP Ledger adds new controls for banks, stablecoins and tokenized funds