Every account on the XRP Ledger must maintain a minimum XRP balance called the reserve requirement. This prevents the ledger from being bloated with empty or abandoned accounts. The reserve is not a fee — it remains in your account — but it cannot be spent while required.

The XRP Ledger's reserve system requires every active account to maintain a minimum balance at all times. This design protects every node on the network, which must store a full copy of the current ledger state.

Base Reserve and Owner Reserve

The reserve has two components. The base reserve is the minimum XRP an account must hold to exist on the ledger. The owner reserve is an additional amount required for each object the account owns — such as trust lines, offers, escrows, or payment channels.

Why Does XRPL Have Reserve Requirements?

Without a reserve requirement, a malicious actor could spam the ledger with millions of empty accounts, causing every node's storage requirements to balloon indefinitely. The reserve provides an economic disincentive against ledger bloat.

• New accounts require an initial deposit meeting the base reserve to activate
• Each trust line requires additional owner reserve XRP
• Closing trust lines and offers frees up owner reserve
• Accounts can be deleted to recover most of the base reserve
• Reserve requirements are separate from the transaction fee burn mechanism