The XRP Ledger went live with version 3.3.0 on August 7, introducing five proposed amendments covering privacy features, batch transactions, and permission delegation, according to Ripple engineers Akinyele and Vadari.
Each amendment requires 80 percent validator support maintained over 14 consecutive days before activation on the network. The upgrade represents the first major release cycle for the ledger since the introduction of its validator amendment process, which gates protocol changes behind a supermajority threshold.
The privacy feature enables transactions to obscure sender and receiver identities while maintaining on-chain verification of asset transfers. Batch transactions allow multiple operations to execute atomically, reducing the number of separate ledger entries required for complex settlement flows. Permission delegation lets accounts authorize other parties to submit transactions on their behalf without sharing cryptographic keys, a feature designed for institutional custody arrangements.
The amendment framework itself has been central to XRP Ledger's governance since late 2024, when Ripple moved away from unilateral protocol decisions toward decentralized validation by its network operator base. The process mirrors similar voting mechanisms in Ethereum's validator set and Solana's supermajority requirements for runtime upgrades.
Validator participation in amendment rounds has historically tracked between 60 and 75 percent of active nodes on the XRP Ledger, according to public ledger state data. The 80 percent threshold means that even with typical turnout, amendments need near-unanimous agreement among participating validators rather than supermajority consent from the full operator base.
Ripple has positioned these features as infrastructure for institutional-grade tokenization and cross-border settlement. The batch transaction capability directly addresses fragmentation costs in multi-step DeFi transactions, while permission delegation addresses custody workflows that require proxy signing without key sharing.
The five proposed amendments currently require validators to vote in favor. If any fails to reach 80 percent within 14 days, proponents would need to resubmit it in a future amendment round. The number that decides whether these features ship is validator adoption of version 3.3.0 itself, since operators must run the software to cast amendment votes.
