Permission Delegation

XRPL accounts can delegate both transaction permissions and granular permissions to other accounts, enhancing flexibility and enabling use cases such as implementing role-based access control. This delegation is managed using the DelegateSet transaction.

Assigning Permissions

You can assign permissions to another account by submitting a DelegateSet transaction.

tx_json = {
  "TransactionType": "DelegateSet",
  "Account": "rDelegatingAccount",
  "Authorize": "rDelegatedAccount",
  "Permissions": [
    {
      "Permission": {
        "PermissionValue": "Payment"
      } 
    } 
  ] 
} 

Updating Permissions

Sending a new DelegateSet with the same Account and Authorize fields updates and replaces the permission list.

Revoking Permissions

Permissions can be revoked using the DelegateSet transaction. There are two ways to revoke permissions:

Revoke All Permissions

To revoke all permissions previously granted to a delegated account, send a DelegateSet transaction with an empty Permissions array:

tx_json = {
  "TransactionType": "DelegateSet",
  "Account": "rDelegatingAccount",
  "Authorize": "rDelegatedAccount",
  "Permissions": []
}

Revoke Specific Permissions

To revoke specific permissions, send a DelegateSet transaction that includes only the permissions that should remain active. Any permissions previously granted to the Authorize account that aren't included in the Permissions array are revoked.

Sending Transactions with Delegated Permissions

When an account has been granted permissions, it can send transactions on behalf of the delegating account using the Delegate field.

For example, if rDelegatingAccount has delegated the TrustSet permission to rDelegatedAccount, then rDelegatedAccount can submit a TrustSet transaction on behalf of rDelegatingAccount as follows:

transaction_json = {
  "TransactionType": "TrustSet",
  "Account": "rDelegatingAccount",
  "Delegate": "rDelegatedAccount",
  "LimitAmount": {
    "currency": "USD",
    "issuer": "rIssuerAccount",
    "value": "1000"
  }
} 

The account that sends this transaction is rDelegatedAccount, although the Account field is the rDelegatingAccount. The secret for this transaction is the rDelegatedAccount secret, which means rDelegatedAccount signs the transaction.

Error Cases

• If the PermissionDelegation feature is not enabled, return temDISABLED.

• If the rDelegatedAccount is not authorized by the rDelegatingAccount for the transaction type or satisfying the granular permissions given by rDelegatingAccount, the transaction returns tecNO_DELEGATE_PERMISSION.

• If the rDelegatedAccount does not have enough balance to pay the transaction fee, the transaction returns terINSUF_FEE_B . (rDelegatedAccount pays the fee, which is the sender in Delegate field, not the Account field).

• If the transaction creates a ledger object, but rDelegatingAccount does not have enough balance to cover the reserve, the transaction returns tecINSUFFICIENT_RESERVE.

• If the key used to sign this account does not match with rDelegatedAccount, the transaction returns rpcBAD_SECRET.

Any other errors are the same as when the rDelegatingAccount sends transaction for itself.