Why Can't I Send All My SOL? Solana Rent, Empty Token Accounts, the 2026 Rent Cut (and TON Storage Fees)

Solana makes every account hold a refundable "rent-exempt" deposit in SOL, and each token you have held gets its own token account that locked 2,039,280 lamports (about 0.00204 SOL) before September 2026. That SOL is missing from your spendable balance, and a wallet also keeps a small reserve for the network fee and its own minimum balance, so "send max" usually cannot empty it. Closing empty token accounts returns the deposit, and as of October 2026 SIMD-0437 is shrinking it in steps, but nothing is refunded automatically: you must sign a close transaction that sends the SOL to your own address.

Why can't I send my whole SOL balance?

Three separate amounts sit between your balance and zero. Staked SOL adds a fourth, because a stake account keeps its own reserve.

1. Network fee. Per Solana's fee documentation, every transaction pays a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, plus an optional priority fee. "Max" is your balance minus the fee. For fees in general, see how transaction fees work on Solana and TON.
2. Rent-exempt minimum on the wallet account. The wallet account's minimum was 890,880 lamports (0.00089088 SOL) before SIMD-0437, 810,624 after step 1 and 650,240 after step 2. A transfer that would leave an account with some SOL but less than its rent-exempt minimum is rejected by the runtime (draining it to exactly zero is allowed), so wallets hold back a reserve.
3. SOL locked in token accounts. Each SPL or Token-2022 token you hold, or once held, has its own account with its own deposit, which your SOL balance does not count. This is the "missing SOL" most people notice.

What is Solana rent, and why is it a deposit and not a fee?

Solana rent is a refundable deposit that keeps an account on the network, and all of it comes back when the account is closed. The formula is (128 bytes of overhead + data length) × lamports per byte.

A standard SPL token account is 165 bytes, so before 2026 it cost (128 + 165) × 6,960 = 2,039,280 lamports, or 0.00203928 SOL. Token-2022 accounts with extensions cost more.

This is also why receiving a new token can cost SOL: someone must fund the recipient's token account. Usually the sender or the app pays, and sometimes you do; the token model differs by chain, as ERC-20 vs SPL vs jetton explains.

What does the 2026 rent cut (SIMD-0437) change?

SIMD-0437 cuts Solana's lamports per byte from 6,960 to 696, a 90% reduction, in five steps, and as of 7 October 2026 steps 1 and 2 are live on mainnet. The table was checked that day against Solana's reduced-rent upgrade page and Solana Compass's report of the step 2 activation; the deposit column is arithmetic from the published rates.

Existing accounts are not refunded automatically. The new minimum applies to new balances, so an account opened under the old rate still holds the larger deposit. After step 2, an old standard token account holds 550,840 lamports (about 0.00055 SOL) more than the new minimum requires. Steps 3 to 5 have no fixed dates: Anza developers say each activates only after state growth checks out, with Agave 4.4 expected around November 2026. A fallback feature gate can reset the rate to 6,960, so the schedule may move.

There are two ways to get SOL back. Closing an empty account returns all of its lamports. The newer token-program instruction WithdrawExcessLamports withdraws only the amount above the current minimum, leaves the account open and needs the owner's signature. Close an account you no longer need; use WithdrawExcessLamports to keep it open if your wallet or tool supports it. Wrapped SOL uses UnwrapLamports instead.

How do I reclaim SOL from empty token accounts safely?

Close each empty token account with a transaction you sign yourself, after checking that it sends the SOL to your own address.

1. Open your address on Solscan or Solana Explorer and list token accounts with a zero balance (see how to read a block explorer).
2. Clear dust first. Per the SPL Token documentation, a non-native token account must hold zero tokens to close, so transfer them out or burn them. Burning cannot be undone, so confirm the token is worthless.
3. Use your wallet's own close-account feature if it has one, otherwise a well-known, open-source tool.
4. Before signing, check that the transaction holds only CloseAccount (and Burn, if you chose it), pays the SOL to your address and shows any fee.
5. Sign it yourself, then confirm on the explorer that the accounts are closed and the SOL arrived.

Are rent reclaim tools safe? A checklist before you sign

A reclaim tool is safe only if you can read what it asks you to sign, because a fake one can look identical to a real one. This page endorses no tool, though Binance.US publishes a help article on recovering Solana account rent in its Web3 wallet.

• You reached the official URL from a trusted source, not an ad or a DM, and the tool is open source or well known.
• It never asks for a seed phrase or private key.
• The preview shows only Close and Burn, paying your own address.
• There is no SetAuthority (which changes who controls a token account), no Approve or delegate, and no transfer of tokens you did not choose.
• Any fee is disclosed, and you ignore "claim your free SOL" popups and airdropped links.

A fake reclaim page follows the same pattern as a wallet drainer: a routine-looking transaction that moves assets or authority to someone else. The rule is the one behind blind signing: never sign what you cannot read. Rent is real money to attackers: in August 2022, OtterSec described a bot that closed Solend's half-created accounts for about 0.0082 SOL of rent per round, a developer-side flaw rather than a consumer tool.

Why does a TON wallet show "uninit" or keep a small balance?

TON charges storage fees continuously for the state an account occupies, while Solana takes a one-off refundable deposit. Fees are paid in GRAM (formerly Toncoin), the TON coin; the network is still called TON.

Per the TON documentation, an account is in one of four states:

• nonexist: no code, data or balance, and no storage fees.
• uninit: a balance but no code yet, such as a wallet that received funds but never sent; it still accrues storage fees.
• active: deployed and running.
• frozen: storage debt above 0.1 GRAM; only code and data hashes remain.

A frozen account with over 1 GRAM of storage debt and a zero balance is deleted. A standard wallet deploys on its first outgoing transaction, which is why explorers such as Tonviewer show "uninit" until you send something. "Send max" can fail or leave dust because the wallet must cover storage and compute fees. Jetton transfers attach extra GRAM to pay the jetton-wallet contracts' fees, and the excess is usually returned.

How WATS Wallet fits

WATS Wallet is a non-custodial wallet (Chrome extension and iOS/Android app) that supports Solana and TON alongside EVM networks. On Solana and TON, fees and deposits are paid in the chain's own coin, SOL and GRAM, so keep a small balance of each. The ATS single-fee-token model, where one ATS balance on BSC pays every EVM fee, covers EVM networks only and does not pay Solana rent or TON storage fees; see how ATS fees work on EVM networks and supported chains. WATS never holds your keys, so any close or reclaim transaction is signed by you, and the checklist above applies whichever wallet or tool you use.