To maintain an active account on the XRP Ledger, every address must hold a minimum amount of XRP that cannot be sent to others — this is called the base reserve. As of December 2024, following a validator vote, the base reserve stands at 1 XRP, reduced from the previous 10 XRP.

In addition to the base reserve, accounts must hold an incremental owner reserve (also called "owner reserve") for each object they own in the shared ledger. As of December 2024, this is 0.2 XRP per object, reduced from 2 XRP. Objects that count include trust lines, open offers on the DEX, escrows, payment channels, NFT pages, signer lists, and tickets.

The total reserve requirement for an account is: Total Reserve = base_reserve + (owner_count × owner_reserve). An account with 5 trust lines would need 1 + (5 × 0.2) = 2 XRP in reserve. This XRP is not lost — it can be recovered if the account deletes objects or the entire account, subject to a deletion fee of 2 XRP.

Reserve requirements serve a crucial purpose: they prevent spam by making it costly to create vast numbers of ledger entries. Without reserves, a malicious actor could flood the ledger with millions of empty accounts or offers, consuming server RAM and disk space for free. By requiring each object to be backed by real economic value (XRP), the protocol ensures ledger growth remains sustainable.

You can look up the current reserve settings using the server_info API method (reserve_base_xrp and reserve_inc_xrp fields) or via the server_state method.