💵Existential Deposit

An existential threat to your wallet

On most Substrate-based chains, an account is only active when it holds a minimum amount, currently set at 1 DOT on Polkadot and 0.000333333 KSM on Kusama. This minimum amount is called the Existential Deposit (ED).

The ED exists so that accounts with very small balances or completely empty do not "bloat" the state of the blockchain. This limit allows the network to maintain high performance and reduce fees.

Things to note -

• Accounts that have never received a deposit are not discoverable on block explorers.

• If you send funds lower than the ED to an empty account, the transaction will fail (nominators need to pay attention to this when collecting staking rewards, see below).

• An account can be reactivated at any time. However, this will not bring back any previously burned funds.

• To protect yourself from accidentally slipping below the ED amount and losing your funds, keep the option "transfer with account keep-alive checks" enabled when sending.

• If you send all (or almost all) of your funds out of an account, which will result in the remaining balance going under the ED, the account will be reaped, and any remaining funds will be burned.

Source - Polkadot Wiki