You Cannot Send All of Your XRP. The Ledger Keeps a Reserve.
XRPL.org lists a 1 XRP Mainnet base reserve and 0.2 XRP per object. You cannot send the reserved XRP to others.
You Cannot Send All of Your XRP. The Ledger Keeps a Reserve.
An XRP Ledger account has to hold a minimum amount of XRP. XRPL.org says you cannot send that reserved XRP to other addresses. You can recover some of it by deleting the account.
An account is a funded address in the shared ledger. The reserve is the XRP that address must keep. The base reserve is the minimum for the account itself. The owner reserve is extra XRP for each object that address owns, such as a trust line or an offer.
Why the ledger keeps a reserve
XRPL.org describes reserve requirements as a way to protect the shared ledger from growing too large through spam or malicious use. To fund a new address, that address must receive enough XRP to meet the reserve.
The reserved XRP is not frozen in every sense. The docs say you can use reserves to pay transaction fees. Another way they put it: you are pre-funding the account to handle those fees. Validators can change the requirement through Fee Voting.
How much is reserved on Mainnet
The Reserves page, retrieved September 28, 2026, lists Mainnet figures of 1 XRP for the base reserve and 0.2 XRP per item for the owner reserve. Other networks may differ.
Those amounts took effect on December 2, 2024, after validator voting. An xrpl.org post dated December 12, 2024, says the base reserve fell from 10 XRP and the owner increment fell from 2 XRP. The base transaction cost of 10 drops did not change.
Check XRPL.org's current Reserves page because validator fee voting can change the amounts. The XRPL.org reserves page checked September 28, 2026 lists the 1 XRP Mainnet base and 0.2 XRP owner reserve per object. Validator fee voting can change reserve levels, so the published figures are not permanent.
What extra objects cost
Each owned object adds the owner reserve. The docs list Checks, Deposit Preauthorizations, Escrows, NFT Offers, NFT Pages, Offers, Oracles, Payment Channels, Signer Lists, Tickets, and Trust Lines. When the object is removed, it no longer counts.
NFTs are grouped into pages of up to 32 tokens. The owner reserve applies per page, not per NFT. Trust lines are shared between two accounts. Most often the token holder owes the reserve and the issuer does not.
There is one stated exception for trust lines. You can create your first two trust lines with only the 1 XRP base reserve. If you fund the account with more than 1 XRP, the page says the account is charged the normal reserve for those first two trust lines.
What happens if you go below the reserve
Transaction processing destroys some of the sender's XRP as a fee. That can take an address below its reserve, including down to zero. The account remains in the ledger.
While you are below the requirement, you cannot send XRP to others or create new objects that would raise the reserve. You can still send transactions that do not do those things, if you have enough XRP left to pay the fee. Receiving enough XRP, or a later drop in the requirement, can put the account back above the reserve.
XRPL.org notes that an OfferCreate transaction can still consume Offers already in the order books to acquire more XRP. You cannot create a new Offer entry in the ledger while you are below the reserve.
How account deletion returns some of the XRP
An AccountDelete transaction deletes the account and related entries and sends most of the remaining XRP to another account. Deleting burns a higher than usual transaction cost, at least the owner reserve for one item, currently 0.2 XRP.
The account's Sequence number plus 255 must be less than or equal to the current ledger index. The account must have no deletion blockers, such as Checks, Escrows, Payment Channels, or trust lines that still hold a balance or non-default settings. It must own 1000 or fewer objects. An issuer cannot delete while anyone holds a nonzero balance of that token.
After deletion, the address can be funded again in the usual way. XRPL.org says a deleted and re-created account is no different from one created for the first time. You recover some of the 1 XRP reserve, and you still destroy at least 0.2 XRP.
The AccountDelete transaction cost applies when the transaction is included in a validated ledger, even if deletion fails because the account does not meet the requirements. The docs recommend the fail_hard option when submitting that transaction. This article describes the documented mechanism. It is not an instruction to delete an account.
What remains unknown
Reserve amounts can change after this retrieval through Fee Voting. Wallet apps may label spendable and total balances differently. Sponsored reserves, described on the same pages, require the Sponsor amendment. This article does not treat that as live Mainnet behavior.
Sources
- XRPL.org, Reserves, retrieved September 28, 2026: https://xrpl.org/docs/concepts/accounts/reserves
- XRPL.org, Deleting Accounts, retrieved September 28, 2026: https://xrpl.org/docs/concepts/accounts/deleting-accounts
- xrpl.org blog, Lower Reserves Are In Effect, published December 12, 2024: https://xrpl.org/blog/2024/lower-reserves-are-in-effect
Disclosure: This article reports XRP Ledger reserve and account-deletion rules from XRPL.org documentation retrieved September 28, 2026. Mainnet reserve amounts can change through validator fee voting. Account deletion has conditions and a mandatory XRP cost. The featured image is a generated illustration, not a photograph of a wallet. This article is not financial, legal, or investment advice. AI-assisted research and writing. Cited sources, not AI alone, support the claims.