Stellar will not let an account hold an asset it has not agreed to hold. That agreement is a trustline: a small record on the ledger saying "this account accepts this asset from this issuer". It is why a token someone sent you may not appear in your wallet, and why you sometimes have to act before you can buy something.

#Why it exists

Anyone can issue an asset on Stellar and send it to any address. Without trustlines, your wallet would fill with unsolicited tokens from strangers — including ones designed to look like assets you recognise. Requiring you to opt in first means nothing arrives in your balance list unless you put it there.

It also makes the issuer explicit. A trustline is to an asset from a specific issuing account, not to a ticker. This is the mechanism that stops a copycat USDC from landing in your wallet alongside the real one.

#Adding one

1. Open Wallet and choose Trustlines.
2. Search for the asset. Check the issuer, not just the ticker — see Asset verification.
3. Approve in your wallet. The asset now appears in your balances at zero until you receive some.

LumosCore adds trustlines for you as part of a swap when you buy an asset you do not yet hold, so most of the time you will not need to do this by hand.

#The reserve

Each trustline holds 0.5 XLM of your account's minimum balance. It is not a fee and it is not spent — the network reserves it while the trustline exists, and releases it the moment you remove the trustline.

An account's minimum balance is (2 + number of subentries) × 0.5 XLM, where subentries are your trustlines, open offers and pool positions. XLM at or below that minimum cannot be spent, which is the usual explanation when a transaction fails despite an apparently healthy balance.

#Removing one

A trustline can only be removed when its balance is exactly zero. Send or swap the remainder first, then remove the trustline, and the 0.5 XLM it was holding is released back into your spendable balance.

Clearing out trustlines you no longer use is the simplest way to recover XLM from an account that has accumulated a lot of them.

#Claimable balances

If somebody sends you an asset you have no trustline for, the payment cannot be credited directly. Stellar parks it as a claimable balance — it is yours, held by the network, waiting.

Claimable balances appear on your Wallet page. To accept one, add the trustline for that asset and then claim it. Check the issuer before you do: anyone can create a claimable balance addressed to you, including with an asset named to impersonate a real one, and accepting it is what puts it in your wallet.

Last updated 29 August 2026