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.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin