Tickets (Out-of-Order Transactions)

How the XRP Ledger's ticket system lets accounts prepare transactions to be submitted later, out of strict sequence order.

The normal rule: strict sequence order

Every XRP Ledger account has a sequence number that increases by exactly one with each transaction it submits, and transactions normally must be processed in that exact order — a transaction with sequence number 105 cannot be applied before sequence number 104 has already been processed. This is a standard and effective way to prevent replay attacks and keep an account's transaction history unambiguous.

Why strict ordering is sometimes inconvenient

This rule becomes limiting in specific scenarios:

• Multi-signing workflows (see Advanced Account Features), where collecting enough signatures for a transaction can take an unpredictable amount of time, during which the account's normal sequence number may need to keep advancing for other purposes.
• Pre-preparing transactions to be submitted later or by a different process, without knowing in advance exactly when — or in what relative order — they'll actually be needed.
• Parallel transaction preparation, where multiple transactions are being readied concurrently rather than strictly one at a time.

What a Ticket is

A Ticket is a reserved, one-time-use sequence-number slot that an account can create in advance via a TicketCreate transaction, and then "spend" later with any single transaction, at any point, regardless of the account's current normal sequence number at that time. Each ticket can be used exactly once, for exactly one transaction.

How this helps

Once an account holds one or more tickets, it can prepare several transactions in advance — each referencing a specific ticket rather than a specific sequence number — and submit them in whatever order becomes convenient, rather than being locked into the strict, one-at-a-time sequence ordering that normally applies.

Reserve cost

Like other ledger objects, each outstanding ticket counts against the account's owner reserve until it's used or canceled — a small XRP cost for the flexibility tickets provide.

Typical users

Tickets are a relatively specialized feature, most commonly used by exchanges, custodians, and other institutional or automated systems managing complex, concurrent, or multi-signature transaction workflows — less commonly needed for simple personal wallet use, where strict sequential ordering is rarely an inconvenience.