A new proposal submitted to the XRP Ledger Standards repository aims to overhaul how multi-signature transactions are coordinated on the network, addressing a long-standing gap between XRPL's built-in multisig support and the workflows institutional custodians actually need.
The proposal, called On-Chain Cosigner, was authored by Shawn Xie, Zhiyuan Wang, Chenna Keshava B S and Mayukha Vadari. It would let signers collect and validate multi-signature approvals directly on the ledger, removing the need for external coordination channels or a centralized party to assemble the finished transaction.
The “Last Mile” Problem It Targets
XRPL has supported multisignature accounts for years, but the process has always required off-chain coordination: a transaction is built, then manually distributed to each authorized signer, who sign and return it through separate channels such as email. If the person coordinating that process loses the collected signatures or goes offline before the transaction is finalized, the entire signing effort can fail and has to restart — what the proposal's authors describe as a “last mile” problem in enterprise custody setups.
How On-Chain Cosigner Works
Under the proposal, a participant would create a TransactionProposal object directly on the ledger, containing an immutable copy of the transaction payload. Each signer's approval would then be validated on submission and appended to a growing, tamper-proof list of signatures tied to that proposal — rather than being collected and verified separately off-chain. Once enough approvals are gathered, anyone can copy the completed transaction and submit it through the ledger's standard transaction process.
That design is intended to complement other XRPL capabilities aimed at enterprise use, including Batch transactions (XLS-56) and sponsored fees and reserves, both of which reduce friction for institutions running high-volume or fee-sensitive operations on the ledger.
Part of a Broader Institutional Push
The proposal lands amid a broader shift in how XRPL is being positioned for institutional custody. Ripple has spent much of 2026 building out custody infrastructure through partnerships with firms like Securosys and Figment, and in December 2025 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency conditionally approved Ripple National Trust Bank, which is set to hold reserves behind Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin and offer digital asset custody services to institutional clients. Industry watchers have also pointed to a distinction worth noting for XRP holders specifically: banks increasingly use the XRP Ledger's infrastructure for settlement and tokenization pilots without necessarily buying or holding XRP itself, meaning ledger-level upgrades like this one are aimed more at improving the network's enterprise plumbing than at driving direct token demand.
If adopted, On-Chain Cosigner would remove one of the more manual, error-prone steps in that plumbing — a change that could matter more to custodians and enterprise integrators than to retail XRP holders, but one that fits the ledger's broader trajectory toward production-grade institutional use rather than pilot programs.
