We propose holding an opinion vote on burning 5–50% of the total MNDE supply, held in the DAO treasury. Based on the vote’s outcome, the selected burn amount will then be executed via the Realms-controlled treasury.
Background and Context
Fixed supply. MNDE has a hard cap of 1 billion tokens and minting is permanently disabled.
Treasury overhang. The DAO treasury holds ~564 million MNDE (≈ 56.4 % of supply), while the circulating supply is ~430 million.
Prior initiatives. Recent proposals have explored buy‑backs, fee burns, and other deflationary levers to reinforce token economics.
Burning between 50 million and 500 million MNDE would lower the total supply to 950 million–500 million and reduce treasury holdings to 593 million–143 million, creating immediate deflationary pressure in line with the existing DAO objectives.
Rationale
Overhang reduction. With ~56.4 % of supply sitting idle in the treasury, most of it is unlikely ever to be used. This outsized balance inflates the fully diluted valuation (FDV) relative to the circulating market cap, thereby dampening price performance. Burning a portion of these tokens improves the MC / FDV ratio and removes the overhang weighing on market sentiment.
Treasury capacity. Even a 50 % burn leaves ≥ 143 million MNDE for future grants and liquidity incentives.
Market confidence. A transparent, onchain reduction underscores the DAO’s commitment to sustainable tokenomics.
Implementation
Opinion Vote. First, we will initiate a DAO proposal for a multi‑choice poll with seven options:
No Burn, 5 %, 10%, 20 %, 30 %, 40%, 50 % the total MNDE supply.
Common: Burn Tokens Instruction. Once the opinion vote concludes, we will initiate another DAO proposal with an on‑chain burn instruction for the amount that receives the most votes..
Execution. If the burn instruction proposal is approved, the Marinade Foundation Council multisig follows the vote and executes the transaction and burn hash on all official channels.
Risks and Considerations
Irreversibility. Burned tokens cannot be re‑minted; over‑burning limits future flexibility.
Opportunity Cost. Burned tokens are unavailable for ecosystem growth grants or partnerships.
Informed Decision-Making. The opinion vote must be accompanied by thorough discourse and educational materials so that participants understand the trade-offs at each percentage band.
I would like to hear what plans the team has to usefully deploy its treasury tokens. There is still a long way to go to dominate the staking market, DEX liquidity for MNDE could be better and with the US SOL ETF around the corner, I wonder whether MNDE could be used as an incentive to attract more stake (similar to the recent BitGo announcement).
I think a symbolic amount to signal to the market a new era for the token, while leaving plenty of room for future incentives could be the way to go. Maybe a way to do this would be to burn as much as is projected to make via buybacks in say 1 year. For instance, if we project that 10% of the token supply will be purchased via buybacks and returned to the DAO treasury in one year, burning an equivalent amount would seem reasonable.
A few thoughts-- I would completely remove the No Burn, 5% and 10% choices for the burn. They are not significant enough to impact token price or community/holder mindshare relative to other proposals in the recent past.
If any of those choices ended up being the selected choices then you likely go through the treasury vote with subdued to limited impact. There are also too many options to likely get to a realistic representation of the majority.
I would keep 20%-50%, if any of those become selected than Marinade is in a much better position.
That’s a good point, and I agree that narrowing the range to just the 20%, 30%, 40%, and 50% burn options would help focus the vote on impactful amounts and make it easier to reach a clear outcome. I’ll suggest updating the proposal so those are the only choices.
Listening to several of the twitter spaces from Marinade. If the idea is to get more eyes on the project. Burning half of the supply would be such an attention head turning event. Especially with $10mm in annual revenue with solid MNDE buybacks. MNDE would be so scarce. Go big and burn 50%. Dao will still have +160mm tokens and growing balance through buy backs.
According to the Realms link posted by the OP the treasury today contains 643M MNDE tokens. If we deduct 100M tokens from MIP-15, it should still be possible to burn 50% of the total supply.
50% is the only thing that makes sense with the new changes. The buy backs should be the only MNDE needed.
Millions of tokens in a treasury looks awful for & casts uncertainty. They represent potential dilution.
I’d propose 50% to be burned after we’ve had 3 months of buybacks at potentially lower prices. Then burn the rest. Only keep the same number equal to what was bought back.
For simple math. We buy back 300 over 3 months.
We keep that + 300 = 600
Burn the remaining treasury.
Scarcity is imperative as value is driven into $MNDE. Idle potential liquidity sitting in the treasury is a path to stagnationemphasized text in token appreciation.
If we want value hammered into the token, we need to be looking to aggressively reduce supply as the protocol grows in adoption.
We have an opportunity to reset the baseline. Don’t F it up by voting for 39% or less. There’s no benefit for having uncirculated supply in the 100’s of millions.
Go vote. If you hate creating value vote for less than 40%. Let’s have excess uncirculated supply for fun!
Buybacks should be all we need to support any future initiatives.
500M total supply should be all we need based on what’s already circulating. 600M is the upper limit & highly questionable at that.
If we create enough value & demand then we shouldn’t need so many tokens sitting there.
If the team delivers & keeps crushing it, the buybacks are the only thing we’ll need going forward to supply MNDE This is how it should work & without millions of uncirculated tokens sitting idle in the treasury. Things are in a great place & set up for the tokenomic flywheel to sustain itself & in the process drive value to MNDE as a byproduct.
500M should be all that’sneeded for a governance token but 600M we could live with to support any existing commitment. Not ideal but better than current conditions.