Burn Address
A wallet address with no known private key, used to permanently and verifiably remove tokens from circulation by sending them somewhere no one can ever spend them.
A burn address, sometimes called a null address or eater address, is a wallet address constructed in a way that makes it either mathematically impossible or practically certain that no one holds or will ever discover its corresponding private key. Sending tokens to a burn address permanently and verifiably removes them from circulation, since those tokens become unspendable and unrecoverable, achieving the same practical effect as a token burn (see Kaavon's "Token Burn" glossary definition) mechanism built directly into a protocol's code.
Because burn addresses are publicly visible on-chain like any other address, anyone can independently verify exactly how many tokens have been sent to one, providing transparent, auditable proof of how much supply has genuinely been removed — this transparency is part of why sending tokens to a known burn address is a commonly used alternative to a protocol-level burn mechanism, especially for simpler tokens that weren't originally designed with a built-in burn function.
Examples
- A project without a built-in burn function might instead send tokens directly to a well-known burn address, achieving the same permanent supply-reduction effect.
- Anyone can independently verify exactly how many tokens have been sent to a public burn address, providing transparent, auditable proof of removed supply.