Developers on the XRP Ledger have put forward a code change that would permit the creation of accounts holding no XRP. The proposal, filed on October 15, introduces a transaction known as SponsoredAccountCreate. Under the design, an existing account would create a new one and assume responsibility for its reserve requirement, leaving the new wallet with a zero XRP balance.

The XRP Ledger currently requires every active account to maintain a base reserve of 1 XRP. An additional 0.2 XRP is needed for each object the account owns. These locked funds remain in place for the life of the account and serve to limit spam by attaching an economic cost to account creation. A firm opening 100,000 customer accounts would therefore need to set aside 100,000 XRP solely to meet the base reserve before any further network activity occurs.

How the Sponsorship Model Works

SponsoredAccountCreate shifts that reserve obligation to a sponsoring account rather than placing XRP inside the newly created wallet. The overall network requirement stays intact; only the party responsible for meeting it changes. The owner of the sponsored account retains full control of its private keys. The same sponsorship framework can also allow one account to cover transaction fees incurred by another without gaining access to the user’s keys.

The new transaction builds directly on the broader Sponsored Fees and Reserves standard. That standard has not yet activated on the main network. The SponsoredAccountCreate code itself remains an open pull request and carries two unresolved automated review findings.

Potential Use for Stablecoins and Automated Payments

The change is aimed at payment applications and software agents that primarily handle stablecoins. Ripple has partnered with Privy, a company owned by Stripe, to support embedded wallets on the XRP Ledger. Those wallets are intended to handle XRP and Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, including transactions initiated by artificial-intelligence agents. At present, even wallets designed only to hold stablecoins must first receive XRP to become active.

By allowing a platform operator to meet the reserve on behalf of users, the proposal would remove the need for end customers or automated agents to acquire XRP before receiving or sending dollar-denominated tokens. Institutional interest in RLUSD has continued to expand through distribution and custody arrangements, though none of those partnerships has confirmed plans to use sponsored account creation.

Validator Support Still Required

Activation depends on the wider Sponsor amendment receiving sustained support from trusted validators. Amendments on the XRP Ledger must hold more than 80 percent approval for two consecutive weeks. As of October 19 the amendment had recorded 11 affirmative votes out of the 29 needed from a set of 35 trusted validators. A later count on October 28 showed approximately 10 yes votes, still well below the required threshold. Support levels can reset the two-week countdown if they fall below the necessary majority.

Until the underlying sponsorship rules activate and the new transaction code completes review, accounts on the XRP Ledger will continue to require the existing 1 XRP reserve at the time of creation.