Why Is Some XRP Reserved in My Wallet, and How Can I Withdraw It?
With XRP, you cannot send your entire balance. The XRP Ledger itself requires every active account to keep a certain amount of XRP as a reserve. Basically, the reserve helps protect the XRP Ledger from spam and unnecessary ledger growth. Depending on how you use your XRP account, the required reserve can be 1 XRP or higher.
Why Does XRP Have a Reserve?
The XRP Ledger uses reserves to prevent the network from being overloaded with unused accounts and ledger objects. Currently every XRP account starts with a base reserve of 1 XRP. The XRP reserve is a minimum amount required to maintain an active account on the XRP Ledger. It is not a Guarda fee, so Guarda cannot remove or bypass it.
Most users who simply hold, receive, and send XRP are only subject to the base reserve. However, the XRP Ledger also supports additional features that create objects associated with your account. Some of these objects require an additional owner reserve of 0.2 XRP each.
You may encounter owner reserves when using more advanced XRP Ledger features such as trust lines, DEX offers, escrows, payment channels, or certain NFT operations. If your account has one object that requires an owner reserve, your total reserve may be 1.2 XRP. Two such objects may increase it to 1.4 XRP.
The values may change in the future. XRP accounts required a 10 XRP base reserve up to December 2024. If the XRP Ledger changes its reserve requirements, the amount of XRP reserved in your Guarda wallet will change accordingly.
Can I Withdraw the Reserved XRP?
You cannot send the XRP reserved by the network through a normal transaction while keeping the account active. But if you no longer want to use the XRP account, an eligible account can be deleted and most of its remaining XRP transferred to another funded XRP address. Account deletion itself has a network cost, and some accounts cannot be deleted until certain objects or obligations associated with them have been removed.
Account deletion is permanent. Make sure you're sending the remaining funds to the correct XRP address and include a Destination Tag if the receiving service requires one.
To delete your XRP account in Guarda:
- Open your XRP wallet and click the three dots.
- Select "Delete Account."
- Enter or select the XRP address where you want to send the remaining funds.
- Add a Destination Tag if the receiving platform requires one.
- Enter your password and save the private key as a backup.
- Review the details and click “Delete.”
Once the transaction is completed, the XRP account will be deleted, and the recoverable balance will be transferred to the destination address.