Two Blockchain Upgrades: XRP Ledger Delegation Goes Live, Solana’s 200ms Blocks Are Next

Blockchains change through upgrades that their operators switch on at set points. Two this week matter for businesses and app builders. The XRP Ledger has turned on a feature that lets one account give limited powers to another. Solana is due to make its blocks arrive faster, every 200 milliseconds instead of 250, on Friday afternoon UK time. TSN offers no investment advice.

XRP Ledger: delegated permissions are live

Confirmed on-chain. On the XRP Ledger, changes arrive as “amendments”, which switch on once enough validators (the servers that confirm transactions) support them for two weeks. On Friday morning TSN asked a public XRP Ledger server about the amendment PermissionDelegationV1_1, and it reported it as "enabled":true [1]. CoinDesk, citing an amendment tracker, reports that it activated on 8 October (reported) [3].

The official description is short: it “Allows accounts to delegate some permissions to other accounts” [2]. It “replaces PermissionDelegation, fixing a critical bug discovered in the original implementation” [2]. According to CoinDesk, each helper account “can receive up to 10 permissions”, and these limit the kinds of action it can take “rather than automatically imposing a spending cap” [3].

Why it matters. A stablecoin issuer, fund or bank can keep the keys that control its main holdings offline, while separate accounts with narrow powers handle routine jobs such as approving customers or making payments. CoinDesk compares this to how banks already split payment and compliance duties among staff [3].

One caveat. XRPL.org warns: “Until the fixCleanup3_4_0 amendment is enabled, it is recommended not to delegate the PaymentBurn granular permission”. Before that fix, a delegate with that permission “can also mint new fungible tokens” in certain circumstances; other permissions are unaffected [2]. CoinDesk reports that the fix “had 27 of 35 validator votes on Friday. It needs 29 to start the two-week countdown that would lift the warning” [3].

Solana: the last step to 200ms blocks is scheduled, not yet live

Confirmed that it is scheduled. Not live when TSN checked at about 06:50 BST on Friday. Solana has been cutting its target “slot” time, the interval in which a block can be produced, in steps from 400 milliseconds. The Solana Foundation says: “The 350ms, 300ms, and 250ms reductions are active on mainnet. The final 200ms reduction is already active on devnet and testnet” and is scheduled for mainnet [4]. CoinDesk dates the earlier steps to 21 August, 28 August and 18 September [5].

The change was designed by Anza, a Solana software developer, in the technical proposal SIMD-0525 [6]. Under that proposal, each step is a “feature gate” that takes effect one epoch (a fixed run of 432,000 slots) after it is switched on [6]. TSN’s check of the public Solana network shows the 200ms switch was flipped at the start of the current epoch, so it takes effect when the next one begins [7]. CoinDesk, citing Anza, expects that around 15:00 UTC (16:00 BST) on Friday (reported) [5]. Epoch timing can drift, so the exact minute may differ.

What changes. Blocks will arrive more often, but each will carry less. Per SIMD-0525, maximum compute per block falls from 37,500,000 to 30,000,000 units [6], which CoinDesk describes as keeping theoretical capacity “roughly unchanged” [5]. The Solana Foundation also notes that a transaction’s recent-blockhash window, its time limit before it expires, shrinks to “30 seconds”. That gives less slack to offline or manual signing flows, where a person approves a transaction by hand [4].

Update, 9 October 2026: Sei’s v6.7 upgrade

Confirmed on-chain. Sei, a blockchain built for fast trading apps, completed a mandatory network upgrade, v6.7, on Thursday 8 October. Its governance proposal #125 passed with no votes against when voting closed at 11:31 BST, and the network’s own records show the upgrade applied at block height 236,450,000 [8][9]. Sei’s release notes gave a target of “2026-10-08T16:30:00 UTC (approx.)”, or about 17:30 BST, with expected downtime of “A few minutes” while operators switched software [10]. “Mandatory” means nodes that did not upgrade “will halt at the upgrade height and fall out of consensus” [10].

What changes for users and builders. The release notes list several removals and limits that apps had to prepare for [10]:

• “IBC, capability and feegrant are removed.” IBC is the protocol Cosmos-family chains use to pass tokens between each other; looking up old IBC transactions now needs an older node.
• “Legacy sei_* and sei2_* JSON-RPC methods are removed”, with apps pointed to the standard Ethereum-style eth_* methods instead.
• Tighter limits on some data queries and a smaller WebSocket message size.

Groundwork for a storage change, not the change itself (proposal). Much of v6.7’s code prepares to move the network’s Ethereum-style data from its current store, memIAVL, to a new one called FlatKV [11]. The upgrade does not start that move. A separate proposal, #126, would “Start the state-commit migration of EVM state from memiavl to FlatKV on pacific-1 at 1000 keys per block” [9]. When TSN checked, it was still in its voting period, which ends at 17:51 BST on Friday 9 October [9]. Ahead of it, Sei asked validators and node operators to install a patch, v6.7.1, which it says is “not a mandatory upgrade” and mostly fixes the migration code [12].

What this does not prove

• That XRPL delegation is risk-free. The PaymentBurn warning stands until a separate fix is enabled [2].
• That Solana’s 200ms blocks are live. As of Friday morning the step was scheduled; check after mid-afternoon UK time [4][7].
• That faster blocks mean more total capacity. Per-block limits shrink to match [6].
• That Sei’s FlatKV storage migration has begun. v6.7 adds the code; starting the migration needs proposal #126, which was still being voted on when TSN checked [9][11].

The Bottom Line

The XRP Ledger now lets accounts delegate limited powers, so key holdings can stay offline, with one known caveat on token burning. Solana’s final cut to 200ms blocks is set for Friday afternoon UK time; it promises quicker confirmations, not more capacity, and shorter expiry windows for slow signers.

Sei’s mandatory v6.7 upgrade is done, removing IBC and some older interfaces. Its bigger storage change is a separate vote that closes on Friday evening UK time.

Sources

1. TSN query to the public XRP Ledger server xrplcluster.com, feature method for amendment 0F48FF561C709540328F31F1C97FD512ACC8B4E42138A161CB0E21ECA292540B (returned “PermissionDelegationV1_1”, “enabled”: true), 9 October 2026, about 06:50 BST. https://xrplcluster.com
2. XRPL.org, “Known Amendments: PermissionDelegationV1_1” (official documentation). https://xrpl.org/resources/known-amendments#permissiondelegationv1_1
3. Shaurya Malwa, “XRP Ledger adds new controls for banks, stablecoins and tokenized funds”, CoinDesk, 9 October 2026, 05:21 BST (trade press; activation date via XRPL Dashboard; validator vote count). https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/10/09/xrp-ledger-adds-new-controls-for-banks-stablecoins-and-tokenized-funds
4. Solana Foundation, “Reduced Slot Times” upgrade page, read 9 October 2026, about 06:50 BST (official). https://solana.com/upgrades/reduced-slot-times
5. CoinDesk, “Solana is about to halve its block times as final 200-millisecond upgrade nears”, 9 October 2026 (trade press; expected time per Anza). https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/10/09/solana-is-about-to-halve-its-block-times-as-final-200-millisecond-upgrade-nears
6. Solana Improvement Document SIMD-0525, “Reduce Slot Times” (author Brennan Watt, Anza), GitHub (primary technical specification). https://github.com/solana-foundation/solana-improvement-documents/blob/main/proposals/0525-reduce-slot-times.md
7. TSN check of Solana mainnet via public RPC (api.mainnet-beta.solana.com), 9 October 2026, about 06:50 BST: 200ms feature account iBRLjhJnkmDZgNoZRDMW11d8ZV7HvsL3vAyRjZB5npW shows activation at slot 454,464,000 (the first slot of the current epoch); network at slot 454,776,508. https://explorer.solana.com/address/iBRLjhJnkmDZgNoZRDMW11d8ZV7HvsL3vAyRjZB5npW
8. Sei Network on-chain governance, proposal #125 “v6.7” (SoftwareUpgradeProposal, height 236450000; status PASSED; voting ended 8 October 2026, 11:31 BST), read via public REST API on 9 October 2026, about 11:58 BST. https://seistream.app/proposals/125 (API record also at https://polkachu.com/gov_proposals/7621)
9. Sei Network public REST API, upgrade module record applied_plan/v6.7 (returned height 236450000) and proposal #126 “FlatKV migration: set NumKeysToMigratePerBlock=1000” (status VOTING_PERIOD; voting ends 9 October 2026, 17:51 BST), read 9 October 2026, about 11:58 BST. https://rest.sei-apis.com/cosmos/upgrade/v1beta1/applied_plan/v6.7 and https://rest.sei-apis.com/cosmos/gov/v1beta1/proposals/126
10. Sei Labs, “v6.7.0” release notes, “Mandatory Mainnet (pacific-1) Upgrade – v6.7”, GitHub, published 5 October 2026 (official). https://github.com/sei-protocol/sei-chain/releases/tag/v6.7.0
11. sei-chain CHANGELOG, “v6.7” section, GitHub (official). https://github.com/sei-protocol/sei-chain/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#v67
12. Sei Labs, “v6.7.1” release notes, GitHub, published 8 October 2026, 11:38 BST (official). https://github.com/sei-protocol/sei-chain/releases/tag/v6.7.1