XRP Ledger account glossary

Account deletion

Deleting an account removes it from the ledger and returns most of its base reserve. It is only allowed once the account is old enough by the ledger’s rule and owns no objects that block deletion, and the same address funded again later becomes a brand-new, unrelated account.

Authorized NFT minter

An authorized minter is another account allowed to mint NFTs on this account’s behalf. Every NFT it mints carries this account as the issuer, not the minter.

Automated Market Maker

An AMM is an on-ledger pool of two assets that lets anyone trade against it and lets holders deposit to earn a share of its fees. A position in an AMM is a share of a pool, not a fixed balance.

Base and owner reserve

The base reserve is the fixed amount every account must hold simply to exist. The owner reserve is an additional increment locked for each object the account owns, such as a trust line, offer, or escrow. Both are set ledger-wide and can change over time by validator vote.

Blackholed

An account is blackholed when its master key is disabled and no working alternate signing path remains, meaning no regular key and no usable signer list. A blackholed account can never sign again, so its settings can never change, by anyone.

Check

A Check is a written authorization to transfer up to a stated amount, which the recipient must actively cash to receive. It draws on the writer’s balance at the moment it is cashed, not when it is written, so the funds are not set aside in advance.

Clawback

Clawback is an issuer power, enabled per token, to pull issued balances of that token back from holders at the issuer’s discretion. Once an issuer enables the clawback setting it cannot be turned off.

Condition-based escrow

A condition-based escrow requires a secret code to be presented before it will release. The ledger stores only the condition, never the code, so the code lives off the ledger with whoever holds it, and losing it generally means the escrow cannot be released.

Credential

A credential is a signed attestation another account issues about this account, sometimes with an expiry. Systems that gate access by credential rely on it, and an expired credential no longer satisfies those checks.

Cross-chain bridge and claims

A cross-chain bridge moves value between the XRP Ledger and another chain, and a claim object represents one transfer in progress across it. An open claim marks a bridge transfer that was started and not yet completed, and it holds reserve while it stands.

Delegated permissions

A delegation grants another account standing authority to submit specific kinds of transactions on this account’s behalf. The delegate can act within those granted permissions until the grant is removed.

Deposit Authorization

Deposit Authorization is an account setting that refuses incoming payments unless the sender has been preauthorized. When it is on, strangers cannot pay the account, with one narrow exception the ledger keeps so a nearly empty account can still receive a small amount of XRP and never gets stuck.

Deposit preauthorization

A deposit preauthorization is a standing permission this account grants so a specific sender, or any holder of a named credential, can pay it even while Deposit Authorization is on. Together these entries define exactly who may deposit.

Destination tag

A destination tag is a number attached to a payment that a receiving service uses to route it to the right internal account. An account that requires one is usually a shared address, such as an exchange, receiving for many customers at once.

DEX offer

A DEX offer is a standing order on the ledger’s built-in exchange to trade one asset for another at a set rate. It rests on the order book until it is filled or cancelled, and it holds owner reserve while open.

DID

A DID is a self-published identity document an account anchors to itself on the ledger. The ledger stores it but does not verify its contents, so what it claims is the account holder’s own statement.

Domain field

The Domain field is a website address an account publishes about itself on the ledger. The ledger does not verify it, so it is only a self-made claim until that site publishes a matching claim back through its xrp-ledger.toml file.

Escrow

An escrow is an amount of XRP, or of an issued token, locked on the ledger to be released to a named destination only after a set time, or when a condition is met. Until then it is held and cannot be spent. Support for issued tokens was added by the TokenEscrow amendment, live on mainnet since February 2026, and an issuer can control whether its token may be escrowed at all.

Escrow cancel path

A cancel date is an optional time after which an unreleased escrow can be returned to the account that created it. An escrow with no cancel date has no built-in path back to its creator.

Escrow finish

Finishing is the transaction that actually releases an escrow to its destination once its time or condition is satisfied. Passing the release time alone moves nothing, and any account, not only the parties, can submit the finish.

Freeze

A freeze is an issuer power that restricts a token, so a frozen holder can generally only send that token back to the issuer. An individual freeze targets one line, while a global freeze applies to every holder of the token at once.

Issuer

An issuer is the account that creates and stands behind a token. Every unit of that token is a claim on its issuer, so the token is only worth what the issuer continues to honor.

Issuer authorization

Some issuers require each holder’s trust line to be individually authorized before it can receive the token. A line that is not yet authorized cannot receive that token until the issuer approves it.

Master key

The master key is the original signing key created with the account and tied to its address for the life of the account. It has full control, and unlike the alternate keys it can be disabled but never changed.

Multi-Purpose Token

An MPToken is a newer kind of ledger-native token that does not use trust lines. Its issuer can lock a holding per issuance, and a locked holding can generally only be sent back to the issuer.

Multi-Purpose Token issuance

An MPToken issuance is the ledger object an issuer creates to define a Multi-Purpose Token, holding its settings such as maximum supply, transfer fee, and control flags, along with the amount currently outstanding. The issuances listed here are ones this account created, meaning it is the issuer of those tokens rather than a holder.

Native XRP

Native XRP is the ledger’s own asset. It has no issuer and is no one’s liability, which is what separates it from every issued token.

NFT

An NFT is a unique token on the ledger, often pointing to external content through a stored link, or URI. The ledger holds only the token and its reference, so whatever the link points to can change or vanish independently.

NFT offer

An NFT offer is a standing bid or ask on a specific NFT, made by some account, stating a side and an amount. An open offer obligates no one, and acting on it is a transaction the holder would have to sign.

Payment channel

A payment channel is XRP an account commits in advance so it can make many fast, signed payments to one counterparty. The committed XRP stays locked until the channel is closed, and closing a still-funded channel runs through a settle delay before the remainder returns.

Permissioned domain

A permissioned domain is a gated space its owner defines, admitting only holders of specific credential types, used for permissioned trading or lending. Its accepted-credential list is exactly who may take part.

Price oracle

A price oracle is an on-ledger object that publishes price data for other ledger logic to read. The prices come from the oracle’s provider and are not verified by the ledger, so anything consuming it is trusting that provider’s feed.

Quorum

The quorum is the total signer weight that must sign before a multi-signed transaction is valid. It sets how many of the listed signers, by weight, it takes to act.

Regular key

A regular key is a second signing key an account can assign, giving whoever holds it the same signing authority as the master key. It can be changed or removed at any time, which is the point of having one.

Reserve

The reserve is an amount of XRP the ledger holds unspendable in every account to discourage ledger spam. It is made of a base amount for the account itself plus an increment for each object the account owns, and it returns to spendable as those objects are removed.

Rippling and No Ripple

Rippling lets a payment between two other parties pass through this account’s balance of the same token, shifting which counterparty owes it. The No Ripple setting, set per trust line, blocks that on a line. The Default Ripple account setting is the opposite switch that turns rippling on across lines by default.

Signer list

A signer list is a set of other accounts allowed to jointly sign for this account, each with a weight and a required total, called the quorum. Any group of signers whose weights reach the quorum can authorize a transaction.

Spendable balance

The spendable balance is the XRP an account can actually use, meaning its total balance minus the reserve currently locked. Reserved XRP is still the account’s, it is simply held rather than available.

Sponsorship

A sponsorship lets one account pay the reserve for another account’s objects, so the objects exist without the holder locking its own XRP for them. It records who is covering whose reserve.

Ticket

A ticket is a reserved transaction slot that lets an account submit a transaction later out of its normal order. Each ticket holds owner reserve until it is used or cancelled.

Token (IOU)

A token, also called an IOU, is any asset on the ledger other than XRP. Unlike XRP it always has an issuer behind it, and its value depends on that issuer.

Trust line

A trust line is a link this account opens to hold a specific token from a specific issuer, recording the balance and a limit on how much it is willing to hold. Holding any non-XRP token requires opening its line first.

Trust line limit

The limit on a trust line is the most of that token this account is willing to hold. It only caps holdings, it moves nothing and owes nothing on its own.

Vault, Loan, and Loan Broker

These are the objects of the ledger’s lending protocol. A Single Asset Vault pools one asset from depositors, who hold shares of it. A loan broker manages a vault and issues fixed-term loans from it, and a Loan is one such agreement between the broker and a borrower. The vault holds a single asset type, which may be XRP, a token, or an MPToken, so amounts in these objects are in that asset, not automatically XRP.