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Glossary

Burn

Permanently removing tokens from circulation by sending them to an unspendable address (or invoking a contract function that destroys them).

Burning tokens reduces circulating supply forever. The simplest implementation is sending them to a known unspendable address (0x000…dead); ERC-20 contracts usually expose a burn() function that destroys the caller's balance directly.

Burns can be one-time governance actions, ongoing buy-and-burn treasuries, or protocol-level: EIP-1559 burns the base fee of every Ethereum transaction. The point is always the same — reduce supply without redistributing it to anyone in particular.