Xaman XRP Account Activation: The 1 XRP Reserve Explained

A new Xaman account shows "not activated" because an XRP Ledger account does not exist until someone sends it at least the base reserve — 1 XRP at current settings. Send 1 XRP or more from an exchange or another wallet to your r-address and the account is created. That 1 XRP stays locked as long as the account exists, and every trust line, offer or other object you own adds an owner reserve of 0.2 XRP.

Where the reserve rule comes from

The XRP Ledger keeps every account and object in a shared state that all validators store. To discourage spam accounts, each account must hold a minimum XRP balance. The values are set by validator voting and were lowered in December 2024 from 10 XRP base and 2 XRP owner reserve to 1 XRP and 0.2 XRP. Xaman (the wallet formerly called XUMM) reads the current values from the ledger, so it always shows the right figure — older guides that tell you to send 10 or 20 XRP are out of date.

How much of your balance you can spend

Spendable XRP = balance − 1 XRP − 0.2 XRP × number of owned objects − the transaction fee. The fee itself is tiny, usually 0.00001–0.0001 XRP. The XRP reserve calculator does the arithmetic for your exact set of trust lines and offers.

First deposits that fail

If the sender tries to deliver less than 1 XRP to an account that does not exist yet, the ledger rejects the payment with the result code tecNO_DST_INSUF_XRP and the sender pays only a tiny fee — the XRP does not leave. Exchanges often show this as a generic "withdrawal failed". The fix is to withdraw at least 1 XRP (in practice 2–5 XRP, so there is room for trust lines and fees). Tokens issued on the XRP Ledger, such as RLUSD or USDC on XRPL, cannot activate an account at all: an account must exist and hold a trust line before it can receive them.

Activating step by step

1. Create the account in Xaman and back up the secret (Xaman uses a family seed or secret numbers; write them down offline).
2. Copy your r-address from the account screen. It starts with r and is 25–35 characters long.
3. Withdraw XRP from an exchange to that address. Leave the destination tag empty — your own Xaman account does not need one. Send at least 1 XRP, preferably a few more.
4. Within seconds the ledger closes (every 3–5 seconds) and Xaman shows the account as active with the reserve deducted from the available balance.

Destination tags, X-addresses and Xaman

The destination tag is for shared addresses. Exchanges and swap services use one r-address for many users and need the tag to know whose deposit it is. When you send from Xaman to such an address, put the tag they gave you in the destination tag field; Xaman warns when the receiving account has the "destination tag required" flag set. Some services show an X-address instead (starting with X): it packs the r-address and the tag into one string, and Xaman decodes it automatically. The memo and tag checker explains which networks use such fields.

Getting reserve back

Owner reserves are released as soon as the object disappears: remove a trust line with a zero balance or cancel an open offer and 0.2 XRP becomes spendable again. The base reserve is released only if the account is deleted with an AccountDelete transaction, which itself burns a special fee equal to the owner reserve (0.2 XRP) and requires the account to have no remaining objects. In practice most people keep the account.

Using an activated Xaman account for a swap

For XRP to USDT, open the XRP to USDT page; the order gives you an r-address and a destination tag — send from Xaman with both filled in, and keep at least the reserve in the account, because Xaman will not let you send it. For an XRP payout, paste your r-address; if the account is not activated yet, the payout must be at least 1 XRP for the ledger to create it, which normal swap amounts easily cover.