Burn tokens

The purpose of this tutorial is to walk through the steps necessary to burn (permanently destroy) tokens, reducing the total supply.

Overview

Burning permanently removes tokens from circulation, decreasing the token’s total supply. Burning is only possible when the token contract authorizes it, which the Register a token contract tutorial sets up. Additional details are available in the tokens explanation and the token protocol reference.

Prerequisites

• General prerequisites (Node.js / Dash SDK installed)

• A configured client: Setup SDK Client

• A registered token contract with a balance to burn: Tutorial: Register a token contract. Set the resulting contract ID as the TOKEN_CONTRACT_ID environment variable.

Code

token-burn.mjs

import { setupDashClient } from '../setupDashClient.mjs';

const { sdk, keyManager } = await setupDashClient();
const { identity, identityKey, signer } = await keyManager.getAuth();

// TOKEN_CONTRACT_ID comes from token-register.mjs.
const dataContractId = process.env.TOKEN_CONTRACT_ID;
const tokenPosition = 0;
const amount = 1n; // Token amounts are bigint values

try {
  if (!dataContractId) {
    throw new Error(
      'Set TOKEN_CONTRACT_ID in .env from token-register.mjs output.',
    );
  }

  const tokenId = await sdk.tokens.calculateId(dataContractId, tokenPosition);

  await sdk.tokens.burn({
    dataContractId,
    tokenPosition,
    amount,
    identityId: identity.id.toString(),
    identityKey,
    signer,
  });

  const balances = await sdk.tokens.identityBalances(identity.id, [tokenId]);
  const totalSupply = await sdk.tokens.totalSupply(tokenId);

  console.log(`Burned ${amount} token`);
  console.log('Token ID:', tokenId);
  console.log(`Identity token balance: ${balances.get(tokenId) ?? 0n}`);
  console.log('Total token supply:', totalSupply?.totalSupply ?? 0n);
} catch (e) {
  console.error('Something went wrong:\n', e.message);
}

What’s Happening

After connecting to the client, we get the auth key signer with keyManager.getAuth(). We then call sdk.tokens.burn() with the contract ID, token position, amount, and signing credentials to destroy 1 token from our balance. Token amounts are bigint values, which is why 1n is written with the n suffix.

After burning, we read back the identity’s balance with sdk.tokens.identityBalances() and the new total supply with sdk.tokens.totalSupply() to confirm both have decreased.