What XRP pays for
3 minDifficulty Checked 2026-11-10- Every transaction pays a fee in XRP. The ledger destroys it.
- Accounts lock XRP as a reserve: 1 XRP to exist, 0.2 XRP per owned object.
- Trades between two tokens can route through XRP when that gives a better rate.
XRP has three everyday jobs on the ledger.
1. Fees. Every transaction costs a little XRP. The usual minimum is 10 drops, or 0.00001 XRP. The fee is not paid to anyone. The ledger destroys it. The point is to make spam expensive. Sending a few transactions costs almost nothing. Flooding the network with millions would not.
2. Reserves. An account must hold XRP to exist. The base reserve is 1 XRP. Each object the account owns, such as a trust line or an open offer, locks another 0.2 XRP. Locked XRP stays in your balance. You get it back when the object goes away.
3. Bridging. Some token pairs trade rarely. Say someone wants to swap GBP tokens for BRL tokens, and the direct market is thin. Both tokens may trade often against XRP. The ledger can sell GBP for XRP, then sell that XRP for BRL, all in one step. This is called auto-bridging. It happens only when the route through XRP gives a better rate.
Tokens cannot do the first two jobs. Fees and reserves are always counted in XRP.
Fees. Every signed transaction carries a Fee field, an amount of XRP in drops. The reference transaction costs 10 drops at minimum load. The cost rises when the network is busy. The XRP is destroyed whether the transaction succeeds or fails with a tec code. Changing Fee after signing invalidates the signature. See Fees and burn.
Reserves. Mainnet values on 2026-11-10:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Base reserve | 1 XRP (1,000,000 drops) |
| Owner reserve | 0.2 XRP (200,000 drops) per owned object |
Validators set both through fee voting. Read them with server_info: validated_ledger.reserve_base_xrp and reserve_inc_xrp. See Accounts and reserves.
Bridging. Auto-bridging happens automatically on any OfferCreate. Any offer that exchanges two tokens can use XRP as an intermediary in a synthetic order book. The engine combines the direct book, such as GBP:BRL, with the composite rate from GBP:XRP and XRP:BRL.
Payment transactions do not auto-bridge by default. Pathfinding can find paths through XRP that have the same effect. See Payments, tags and paths and The DEX.
Account creation. A Payment of XRP is the only way to create an account. It must deliver at least the base reserve.
- Transaction CostRead 2026-11-10
- ReservesRead 2026-11-10
- Auto-BridgingRead 2026-11-10
- PaymentRead 2026-11-10
