Solana minimum balance and SPL wallet creation

Solana requires that all wallets maintain a “rent-exempt” minimum balance for each token type held. The initial requirement is 0.00203928 SOL, which is paid for with the first deposit. Each SPL asset wallet in a vault account also requires a corresponding 0.00001 SOL deposit, paid for with a “create-token” on-chain operation. If the destination Solana account has an insufficient balance, the sender may pay the fee to avoid a failed transaction.

If you transfer an SPL token to a recipient that doesn’t have it listed at their address, Fireblocks automatically triggers the create-token operation. When applicable, the rent-exempt and create-token fees are added to the base 0.0001 SOL transaction fee, which is common during an airdrop.

Activating SOL accounts

When you add a SOL asset wallet to a vault account, it remains inactive on-chain until the rent-exempt balance is deposited. Successfully receiving any initial transfer requires at least 0.00203928 SOL. Keeping a minimum 0.01 SOL balance is recommended as a precaution because outgoing transactions fail if they attempt to leave an amount between 0 and 0.00203928 SOL in the wallet.

Solana addresses that hold less than the rent-exempt threshold may be charged a periodic fee every epoch until the balance is reduced to 0 SOL. Empty Solana wallets may not appear on block explorers until the rent-exempt balance is deposited again.

Emptying Solana wallets

A transaction must withdraw all available SOL to empty a Solana wallet. Create a transaction using the Max amount setting to successfully transfer all available funds from a vault account and deactivate the Solana account on the blockchain. The max amount transaction setting withdraws all available funds from a wallet and deducts the transaction fees from the total transaction amount.