Ethereum Foundation Comes Out Of Hiding With Brand New Token, Here’s What It Does

The Ethereum ecosystem has witnessed a surprising development with the introduction of a new token called BETH (Burned ETH Token). This token, which was recently launched by the Ethereum Community Foundation, is an attempt to reshape how Ethereum’s burn mechanics are understood and ￰0￱ of the invisible process of ETH being destroyed under EIP-1559, BETH was created to give the act of burning Ethereum a tangible and trackable ￰1￱ Makes Burned ETH Visible Under existing Ethereum mechanics, notably EIP‑1559, portions of ETH, such as transaction fees, are destroyed without leaving a trace, serving only to emphasize scarcity. However, ECF’s new BETH changes ￰2￱ to the ECF website , BETH is designed to capture and formalize the concept of proof of ￰3￱ users send ETH to the designated contract, it forwards the funds to an irretrievable burn address and also mints an equivalent amount of BETH on a 1:1 ￰4￱ result is that each BETH token functions as a transparent, audit-ready receipt for ETH that has truly been removed from ￰5￱ means that the more BETH tokens created, the more the number of ETH that have been permanently removed from ￰6￱ to the social media platform X, ECF founder Zak Cole likens BETH to WETH: “BETH is to burned ETH what WETH is to wrapped ETH.” Just as WETH is Ether for smart contracts, BETH standardizes burned ETH, making it usable as a building block for new mechanics, such as burn‑based voting, auctions defined by irreversible token destruction, and even expiring namespaces that require ongoing burn activity to remain ￰7￱ its potential use cases, BETH is only a token that signifies the burn activity of ￰8￱ such, Zak Cole noted that BETH is meant strictly as a receipt and should not be treated as a token with inherent value.

Nonetheless, it is easy to argue that turning burned ETH into a token might undercut the point of burning altogether Ethereum’s Burn Mechanics ETH burning on the Ethereum blockchain officially began on August 5, 2021, with the activation of the London hard ￰9￱ upgrade introduced EIP-1559 (Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559), which fundamentally changed Ethereum’s fee ￰10￱ of all transaction fees going directly to miners, the base fee for each transaction started being burned and permanently removed from ￰11￱ to data from Ultrasound Money , the total ETH burned from the London hard fork to date is approximately 4.612 million ￰12￱ the same time, about 8.431 million ETH have been issued since then, meaning the ETH circulating supply has grown by 3.819 million ETH.

Ethereum’s transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake in September 2022 helped slow issuance dramatically, and deflation is a more realistic long-term scenario if demand is ￰13￱ the time of writing, 0.339 BETH have been created, according to data from Etherscan.