Prevents dust accounts from bloating state.
Current Value
Conversion: ÷ 10^9 (RAO → TAO)
The Big Picture
Substrate chains don't keep empty accounts forever - they cost storage. The existential deposit is the minimum balance to keep your account alive. Drop below it, and your account gets 'reaped' (deleted). This keeps the chain lean but means you must watch your minimums.
Why This Matters
If your balance drops below this, your account is deleted and any remaining dust is lost. Always keep at least this amount, or use transfer_keep_alive to prevent accidental reaping.
Example
The existential deposit is 500 RAO (0.0000005 TAO). If you have 400 RAO and try to send 100 RAO, the transfer succeeds but your account is reaped. You lose the remaining 300 RAO.
Common Questions
- What happens to my dust when reaped?
- It's gone forever. The balance below ED is lost, not redistributed.
- Can I recover a reaped account?
- The address still works - just send it tokens again (at least ED) to recreate. But any previous dust and your nonce are gone.
From Chain Metadata
The minimum amount required to keep an account open.
Use Cases
- Account creation
- Transfer validation
Code Examples
import { ApiPromise, WsProvider } from "@polkadot/api";
import { stringCamelCase } from "@polkadot/util";
const provider = new WsProvider("wss://entrypoint-finney.opentensor.ai:443");
const api = await ApiPromise.create({ provider });
// Query ExistentialDeposit constant
const value = api.consts[stringCamelCase("Balances")][stringCamelCase("ExistentialDeposit")];
console.log("ExistentialDeposit:", value.toHuman());
// Convert RAO to TAO if this is a balance value
const taoValue = value.toBigInt() / BigInt(1e9);
console.log("TAO:", taoValue.toString());Type Information
- Type
- u64
- Byte Size
- 8 bytes
- Encoding
- fixed
- Raw Hex
- 0xf401000000000000
Runtime Info
- Pallet
- Balances
- First Version
- v101
- Latest Version
- v101
- Current Runtime
- v393