XRP Reserve Explained: Why 1 XRP Stays Locked in Your Wallet

Short answer first. On the XRP Ledger every account has to keep 1 XRP that it cannot spend, plus 0.2 XRP for every object it owns: a trust line, an open order on the DEX, an escrow. I read both numbers straight from two public servers on 25 September 2026, validated ledger 107,224,261.

If you searched this, you have probably seen 10 XRP somewhere. Google’s own AI answer still says 10 as I write this. That figure is almost two years out of date: validators cut the reserve from 10 XRP to 1 XRP, and the per-object part from 2 XRP to 0.2, in December 2024. A lot of guides were never updated.

The two numbers that make up the reserve

The ledger counts your reserve with one formula: base reserve plus owner reserve times the number of objects you own. The base reserve is what it costs to exist as an account at all. The owner reserve grows with everything you store in the ledger. Neither is a fee. The XRP stays in your account and still belongs to you; you just can’t move it while the account and its objects exist.

An example. Say you hold XRP, have trust lines for RLUSD, USDC and one meme token, and left a limit order open on the DEX. That is four objects. Your reserve is 1 + 4 × 0.2 = 1.8 XRP. With 25 XRP in the account, you can send 23.2 and not a drop more, minus the network fee for the payment itself.

What counts as an object

The list on xrpl.org is longer than most people expect. Each of these adds 0.2 XRP:

• trust lines, the thing you set up before you can hold any token that isn’t XRP;
• open offers on the built-in DEX, until they fill or you cancel them;
• escrows, checks and payment channels you created;
• NFT pages: NFTs are stored up to 32 per page, so ten NFTs usually cost one or two objects, not ten;
• tickets, signer lists for multisig, deposit preauthorizations and price oracles.

Two details trip people up. A trust line sits between two accounts, but the reserve is normally carried by the side holding the token, which is you, not the issuer. And there is a small exception for new accounts: according to xrpl.org, a fresh account can open its first two trust lines with just the base reserve in it.

Why you can’t send your whole balance

This is the most common support question in any XRPL wallet, ours included. The wallet shows a balance, you type the full amount, and the transaction fails. The ledger will not let a payment take your account below its reserve. Nothing is wrong with the app and nothing is frozen by us; a non-custodial wallet can’t hold or release your XRP, it only signs what the ledger will accept. In Katz Wallet the locked part sits right under your XRP balance on a line called Reserved, so you can see the limit before you hit it.

If your balance does drop under the reserve, for example because the reserve rose or you added objects on a tiny balance, the account keeps existing. You can still send transactions that don’t move XRP or add objects, as long as you can pay the network fee. You just can’t send XRP until you top up or free some reserve.

Activating a new XRP address

A new address does not exist on the ledger until someone sends it at least the base reserve. So the first payment to a brand-new wallet has to be 1 XRP or more; anything smaller is rejected. After that, the owner of the new account can spend everything above 1 XRP. This is also why some exchanges set a minimum XRP withdrawal: they don’t want your first transfer to bounce.

How to get reserved XRP back

Free the owner reserve

Every object you remove returns its 0.2 XRP to your spendable balance straight away. Cancel limit orders you no longer need. To remove a trust line, first bring the token balance to zero, then set the line’s limit to zero; a wallet usually calls this “remove token”. For a handful of forgotten tokens that is easily a couple of XRP.

Delete the account for the base reserve

The base reserve only comes back if you delete the account with an AccountDelete transaction, which sends the remaining XRP to another address. The rules, per xrpl.org, are strict. The account must be at least 256 ledgers old, roughly a quarter of an hour. It must not own trust lines, escrows, checks, payment channels or NFT pages; offers and some other objects are removed automatically. And the deletion itself burns at least 0.2 XRP, charged even if the transaction fails. From a 1 XRP reserve you get back about 0.8.

Important: If you delete an account into an exchange, use the destination tag the exchange gave you. The deleted account’s XRP lands at the exchange’s shared address, and without the tag the exchange has no way to know it’s yours.

Is it worth it? For most people, no. You pay 0.2 XRP to recover 0.8, and a deleted address can be re-created later only by funding it with a fresh 1 XRP. It makes sense when you are cleaning up many old accounts, not one.

Who decides the reserve

Not wallets, not Ripple as a company. Reserves are set by fee voting: validators signal the values they want, and the network switches when enough of them agree. That is how 10 became 1 in 2024, and it’s why I put a date next to every number in this article. If validators vote again, the formula stays the same and only the two numbers change. The fee for an ordinary transaction is separate and tiny, 0.00001 XRP, and it is destroyed rather than paid to anyone.