Ripple’s Schwartz: XRP Has No Issuer

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has made a fresh statement regarding the recoverability of stolen funds on the $XRP Ledger.

Schwartz has shut down the hopes that the network’s “Clawback” feature could be used to reverse illicit transactions involving native $XRP.

The clarification came in the wake of a high-profile security breach targeting the GTF and Apex communities.

The scam victim

The incident began when the X account of the Global Trade Finance (GTF) aggregator alerted the community that their VC wallet had been compromised by a “fake NFT offer” and “$XRP Voucher Scam.”

The breach reportedly affected the project’s second-largest Liquidity Pool (LP) holder.

“The space is increasingly becoming unsafe. Can somebody escalate this to @JoelKatz?” the account pleaded.

One user suggested a potential lifeline: the $XRP Ledger’s controversial “Clawback” amendment.

“I thought there was a clawback mechanism for $XRP. Praying you get back all your funds!” the user wrote.

$XRP has no issuer

Schwartz quickly intervened to clarify that $XRP has no issuer. “Nope. Assets can only be clawed back by their issuer, and $XRP has no issuer,” he stated on X.

Most tokens on the XRPL (such as stablecoins like RLUSD, wrapped Bitcoin, or meme tokens) are “issued assets.” They are created by a specific wallet address.A user must extend a “trustline” to the issuer in order to be able to hold these tokens.

If the issuer enables the “clawback” setting (introduced via amendment XLS-39), they retain the ability to forcibly retrieve tokens from a user’s wallet. This is designed for regulated assets of the likes of stablecoins to freeze funds or reverse a fraudulent transaction.

$XRP is the only asset on the ledger that is not issued by an account. There is no “Issuer Account” with the cryptographic keys required to execute a clawback command. This helps to ensure that $XRP is censorship-resistant.

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