Token Burn
The permanent removal of tokens from circulation by sending them to an unspendable address, reducing total supply.
A token burn permanently destroys tokens by sending them to an address from which they can never be retrieved — typically a known null address like 0x000...dEaD on Ethereum. Once burned, the tokens cannot be recovered; total supply is permanently reduced. The canonical Ethereum burn address is checksum-valid, ensuring tokens can be sent there without errors.
Burns occur in two main forms. Protocol burns are built into the token mechanics: Ethereum's EIP-1559 burns the base fee on every transaction (over 4 million ETH burned since August 2021, sometimes making ETH deflationary). BNB has a quarterly burn targeting a 100M token supply. Discretionary burns are deliberate one-off events — a team burning unsold treasury allocation or buying tokens on the open market to burn them.
The economic effect of burns mirrors share buybacks: if demand is constant, reducing supply should increase the price of each remaining token. However, the actual price impact depends on whether the burned tokens represent genuine circulating supply reduction (tokens that would otherwise have been sold) versus locked tokens that were never circulating anyway.