Stellar Burns Over 55 Billion Tokens Worth $4.7 Billion USD

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced a new mandate today for its network’s development, stating that it has burned over 55 billion Stellar Lumens (XLM) tokens. 

According to a Medium post on Nov. 4, the development foundation drastically reduced the number of tokens in existence as part of an effort to become more efficient as it moves forward. 

Of the over 85 billion tokens that were earmarked for SDF operations, giveaway programs and partnership programs, the SDF burned over 55 billion. 

At a current price of $0.085 per token, the value of the burned tokens is nearly $4.7 billion. The coin has reacted positively to the news, seeing a price increase of nearly 25% on the day at press time.   

Adding the surviving tokens in the aforementioned programs to the XLM that are already out in the world, there are exactly 50 billion XLM in existence, according to the blog post. 

Breakdown of XLM burn and remaining token disbursement. Source: Stellar Development Foundation

SDF focuses on development in the ecosystem 

The SDF states that the burn was geared to making the system more efficient as it moves forward. It wrote:

“SDF can be leaner and do the work it was created to do using fewer lumens. Over the years we’ve also seen that giveaways and airdrops have diminishing effects, especially in the outsized amounts our original plan was designed to support. So a smaller public-facing program would have just as much impact.”

The development organization said that it will pour 12 billion of the remaining tokens ($1.02 billion) into “an aggressive program of direct development and advocacy for Stellar.” SDF said that it expects to double its current staff of nearly 60 by the end of the year. 

Two billion XLM ($170 million) will go into ecosystem support, while 1 billion XLM ($85 million) will go into Stellar’s infrastructure grant program. 

Additional sums of tokens will be distributed to use-case investment, currency support, new products, the Stellar Enterprise Fund and other applications. 

Stellar removes inflation feature

In September, Stellar announced that it intended to remove its inflation feature in an upcoming upgrade. The Stellar Development Foundation said that developers wanted to get rid of the tool, which they said is no longer useful for network participants.