From decrypt by Logan Hitchcock

Account activation on the XRP Ledger now only requires 1 XRP, valued at around $2.50, to meet the blockchain’s reserve requirement—a feature designed to limit excessive growth of the network by setting a minimum amount of XRP an account must hold.

The reserve fee structure was changed late Monday when validators approved new reserve fees on the XRP Ledger, dropping the base reserve requirement from 10 XRP to 1 XRP. 

“Together with other UNL Validators we've voted to reduce the XRPL Reserves!” said the pseudonymous Aesthetes Fine Art, an XRP Ledger validator on X (formerly known as Twitter). “It's now 10x cheaper to start operating on the XRPL!”

The change makes creating an account on the XRP Ledger 90% cheaper as measured by XRP, making it less cost-prohibitive to get started as the price of XRP has risen in recent days. XRP has skyrocketed by more than 400% in the last 30 days, and it would have previously required about $25 worth of the cryptocurrency to keep an account in good standing.

Additionally, users that maintained accounts on the ledger will have XRP freed up, after it was previously unable to be used while being held for the reserve requirement. 

In addition to slashing the base reserve requirement, the XRP Ledger reduced the owner reserve requirement to 0.2 XRP, down from 2 XRP previously. The base reserve requirement is the fee associated with owning an object on the ledger.

In other words, for each new token or group of NFTs owned on the XRPL Ledger, an account owner needs to reserve an additional 0.2 XRP on top of the base reserve fee.

Developers in the XRP Ledger ecosystem have been debating a change in reserve fees since at least October of this year, citing both pros and cons for a lower barrier to entry and cheaper fees.

“The number one concern would be increased activity on the ledger to the point where it becomes a challenge for infrastructure. At this point I feel this is a good problem to have,” said  Wietse Wind, a leader at XRPL Labs and Xaman Wallet.

Account creation on the XRP Ledger has surged in recent days with more than 30,000 new accounts activated on Monday, a yearly high for the network according to data from XRP Scan. Part of that surge may be tied to interest in meme coins minted on XRP Ledger, which have seen rapidly rising prices in recent days.

XRP, a Ripple-linked asset, has pushed back towards its all-time high in recent days amid speculation over XRP ETFs and improved regulatory clarity under President-elect Donald Trump. The token overtook Tether earlier this week to become the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.