XRP Ledger Zero Reserve Proposal Would Let Apps Open Wallets With No XRP

Every new wallet on the XRP Ledger has to lock up 1 XRP before it can do anything. A code change filed on October 15 would let an app pay that reserve for its users, so a wallet can open with a balance of zero.

That matters for the people the ledger is chasing right now: stablecoin apps and AI agents. Neither wants to buy XRP first just to switch a wallet on. The catch is that the change sits behind a vote that is nowhere near passing.

Ripple’s J. Ayo Akinyele put the agent push in numbers this month:

J. Ayo Akinyele @ja_akinyele

Just a couple of months ago, I predicted XRPL would quickly surpass 10M agentic transactions.

XRPL has now hit another milestone, processing over 13M with 166 x402 merchants. Agentic payments now account for roughly 25% of activity on the ledger.

100M might actually come sooner

11:28 PM · Oct 9, 2026 View on X

What Does the XRP Ledger Zero Reserve Proposal Change?

It adds one transaction, SponsoredAccountCreate. An existing account creates a new one and takes on its reserve, and the new account starts with no XRP in it, per the pull request in the ledger’s main code base.

Today the rules are simple and a little awkward. A wallet only exists once someone sends it at least 1 XRP, the base reserve set by validator vote. Each trust line costs another 0.2 XRP, and a user needs one to hold Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin. So a new RLUSD wallet ties up 1.2 XRP, and the user has to get XRP from somewhere before the first payment.

The sponsor can also prepay a pot for the new account’s transaction fees and for the reserves of a set number of extra objects, like that trust line. The user keeps the keys. The sponsor only carries the cost.

The reserve doesn’t vanish. It moves to the app’s balance sheet. At $1.29 per XRP, an app opening 100,000 RLUSD wallets would lock about 120,000 XRP, or roughly $155,000, in its own account instead of asking each user for $1.55.

Why Do Stablecoin Apps and AI Agents Care?

Because onboarding is where they lose people. On October 13, Stripe-owned wallet company Privy brought its wallets to the XRP Ledger for apps that move XRP and RLUSD, including server-side wallets that AI agents use for x402 payments. Privy said gas sponsorship is still to come.

Agents are already a big slice of traffic. Akinyele counts over 13 million agent transactions and 166 x402 merchants, about a quarter of activity on the ledger. An app that spins up a wallet per agent pays the reserve on every one of them, and zero-balance sponsored accounts make that a single line item.

SIDE TRAIL: Ripple and Robinhood Partner on RLUSD: Live on Robinhood Chain, App Comes Later

When Could Zero-XRP Wallets Go Live?

Not soon. The transaction is gated behind a new amendment, SponsorV1_1, and that one requires the Sponsor amendment (XLS-68, sponsored fees and reserves) to switch on first.

Sponsor is in voting now and has 9 votes, about a quarter of the trusted validators, XRPScan shows. An amendment needs 80% of them, around 28 votes, and has to hold that for two weeks straight. SponsorV1_1 isn’t up for a vote at all yet: the pull request is still open, waiting on review from two Ripple engineers, with two issues flagged by an automated code check.

XRP itself is weak into this. The XRP price was $1.29 at the time of writing, down 3.7% in 24 hours and 12.6% in a month.

It is sitting on the 200-day moving average at $1.28, with the 50-day at $1.40 above. A daily close under $1.25 would break the October floor; $1.37 is the first ceiling.

TRAIL MAP: Your First Crypto Wallet, Set Up Safely: Hot vs Cold and the Seed Phrase

The vote count is the thing to watch. Until Sponsor climbs from 9 votes toward 28, zero-XRP wallets stay a pull request, and every new user still needs a little XRP before they can hold a dollar on the ledger.

Written by

VikingXBT

On the climb since 2017. Trades futures and reads onchain data. Automates the boring parts.

More from VikingXBT →