A short-lived fall in validator backing has delayed activation of the XRP Ledger’s latest bug fix from Oct. 23 to Nov. 4, according to CoinDesk. The change was less than two days from completing the network’s required approval period when support briefly fell below the threshold needed to keep its countdown running.
The patch, identified as fixCleanup3_4_0, had reached the required support level but lost that progress after the number of approving validators dropped to 26 out of 35 for roughly two hours. Support later recovered and has since risen to 31 validators, but the interruption forced the 14-day approval clock to restart.
Why the activation was pushed back
The XRP Ledger relies on independent validator servers to agree on which transactions are valid and to approve changes to the network’s rules. For this type of amendment, more than 80% of the 35 validators trusted by default must support the change. That means at least 29 validators must approve it.
Support is checked approximately every 15 minutes. Approval must remain at or above the required level at every check throughout a continuous 14-day period. A single failure resets the countdown, even if the drop is brief.
The fix had been sitting at exactly 29 approvals on Monday, with activation scheduled for 09:34 UTC on Oct. 23. At a check conducted at 12:54 UTC on Wednesday, the count had fallen to 26, according to data cited by CoinDesk from XRPL Dashboard. By 14:46 UTC, support had returned to 29, starting a new approval period.
XRPLWin now lists the expected activation time as 14:46 UTC on Nov. 4. The latest figure is more comfortable than during the first attempt: 31 of 35 validators are now supporting the amendment, giving it two votes above the threshold.
The tracking services do not identify which validators stopped supporting the change. A validator may be counted as absent in the same way as a negative vote if the network cannot communicate with it during a checkpoint, including when a server is offline or restarting.
What the patch changes
The amendment addresses a token-creation loophole and modifies parts of the XRP Ledger’s lending-related calculations.
According to the release notes for xrpld 3.4.0, it prevents an account that has permission only to burn or destroy an issuer’s tokens from creating new tokens in certain circumstances. It also changes how the lending code determines whether a loan is late or in default.
These changes are connected to a broader system that Ripple has presented to banks and payment companies since June. Under that design, lenders place XRP or other tokens into vaults, while a broker lends those assets for a fixed term. The lending system itself had not gone live as of Thursday.
The broader lending functionality also had not secured enough validator support to start its own activation countdown. As a result, the bug-fix amendment and the proposed lending system remain at different stages of the network’s governance process.
XRP market picture
Moneyiar market data at 23:03 on Oct. 22, 2026, showed XRP at $1.3052458176, down 4.74% over 24 hours and 2.38% over seven days.
Other assets in the supplied Moneyiar data were also mostly lower:
- edgeX (EDGE) was $0.3072648016 at 23:04, down 9.85% in 24 hours and 2.3% over seven days.
- ChangeNOW Token (NOW) was $0.4335943848 at 22:03 on Sept. 25, up 0.29% over 24 hours and 2.18% over seven days.
- Movement (MOVE) was $0.006995004 at 18:03 on Oct. 22, down 7.95% in 24 hours and 12.56% over seven days.
The validator delay concerns the timing of a software amendment on the XRP Ledger. It does not change the stated approval requirements: the fix must complete a fresh, uninterrupted 14-day period with support from at least 29 of the 35 trusted validators before activation can proceed.
