# Clean up a Solana wallet: dust, spam coins and empty accounts

> Sell the dust that is worth more than the fee, burn the rest, close every empty account, and leave spam links alone. Done right, a busy wallet usually hands back 0.05 to 0.2 SOL.

Page: https://ravenwallet.pro/blog/clean-up-solana-wallet
Updated: 2026-10-27

## What builds up in a wallet

A wallet that has traded for a while collects three kinds of clutter:

- **Dust**: small leftover balances of real coins, a few cents of one, a few dollars of another.
- **Spam coins**: coins nobody asked for, sent to thousands of wallets at once. Many carry a website in their name or picture to lure you somewhere that asks you to sign.
- **Empty token accounts**: one for every coin you sold to zero. Each still holds the rent deposit it was opened with, about 0.0015 to 0.002 SOL.

Each one is small. Across a few dozen coins and a few wallets, it adds up, and it makes the wallet harder to read.

## Sell, burn or leave it

Go through the coins in this order:

1. **Worth more than it costs to sell?** Sell it. A swap costs a network fee of a fraction of a cent plus the app's swap fee, so a coin worth a dollar or more is usually worth selling.
2. **Worth less, or cannot be sold?** Burn it. Burning destroys the coins in your account so it can be closed and the rent comes back. Many dead coins have no buyers at all, so burning is the only way to clear them.
3. **Spam with a link in it?** Never visit the link and never sign anything the site asks for. Burning the coin from your own wallet is safe; interacting with the site is how wallets get drained.
4. **Frozen?** Some coins can be frozen by their creator. A frozen balance cannot be sold, burned or moved, so leave it. Hide it if your wallet lets you.

Then close every account that is now empty. That is where the SOL comes from: see [how to get SOL back from empty token accounts](/blog/reclaim-solana-rent).

## What to watch for

- **Fake versions of real coins.** Spam often copies the name and logo of USDC or a popular coin. Check the coin's address (its mint) before you treat a balance as real.
- **Coins that tax every transfer.** Some newer coins (Token-2022) keep a fee on each transfer. The withheld fees have to be collected before the account can close; a good clean up tool does this for you.
- **Coins with transfer hooks.** These run the coin creator's own program on every transfer. Raven refuses to move them, and you should be careful with any tool that does.
- **The clean up transaction itself.** A cleaning site builds the transaction you sign. Read the preview: it should only sell or burn the coins you picked and send SOL to your own wallet.

## How much you get back

| Wallet | Empty accounts | SOL back |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Light use, opened this year | 10 | about 0.015 to 0.02 |
| Active trader, a year or more | 40 | about 0.06 to 0.08 |
| Bot or sniper wallet | 120 | about 0.18 to 0.24 |

_Rent alone, at 0.00149 to 0.00204 SOL per account; dust that sells adds to it._

## How Raven does it

Clean up works on one wallet or every wallet you select. For each coin it decides to sell (through Jupiter, when the coin is worth more than selling costs) or burn (under a dollar limit you set), closes every account that ends up empty, and lists the SOL each wallet gets back before you sign. Coins on your protect list are never touched, frozen coins are named and left alone, and every sale is test-run before you sign, so a coin that cannot really be sold shows up in the review instead of failing halfway.

## Questions

### Should I burn spam tokens or just hide them?

Hiding keeps them out of sight but the account keeps its rent. Burning and closing the account clears it and returns the SOL. Either way, never open the link the spam advertises.

### Can burning a token hurt my wallet?

Burning only destroys coins you hold. It cannot touch other coins or your SOL. The danger is a site that asks you to sign something else while claiming to burn.

### Why can't I sell some of my coins?

There may be no buyers left, the coin may be frozen, or it may be built so it can be bought but not sold. Burn what you cannot sell if you want the account closed.

## Sources

- [Solana docs: Close a token account](https://solana.com/docs/tokens/basics/close-account)
- [Solana docs: Burn tokens](https://solana.com/docs/tokens/basics/burn-tokens)
- [Solana docs: Token extensions, transfer fees](https://solana.com/docs/tokens/extensions/transfer-fees)
- [Phantom help: Burn an unwanted NFT](https://help.phantom.com/hc/en-us/articles/8698835626003-How-to-burn-an-unwanted-NFT-on-Solana-in-Phantom)