Token Burn

A token burn permanently removes tokens from circulation, either by calling a burn function that destroys them or by sending them to an address for which no private key exists. Projects burn tokens to reduce supply, to retire assets after a swap or a bridge transfer, or as part of a fee mechanism in which a portion of every transaction is destroyed. Ethereum's base fee, for example, is burned rather than paid to validators. A burn lowers total supply, but it does not create value on its own: demand, real usage and the rest of a project's distribution matter far more. Burns are irreversible, so tokens sent to a burn address by mistake cannot be recovered by anyone.