SKL Burning Is Live: SIP-4 Moves From Vote to Production
For the first time in SKALE’s history, network revenue is being converted directly into permanent reductions of SKL supply. SIP-4: SKL Burning & SKALE Expand Economics passed the SKALE DAO and is now live. Every month, half of the aggregate revenue collected from a SKALE Expand deployment is sent back to Ethereum mainnet and burned.
What the community decided
SKL burning has been one of the most heavily requested items from the SKALE community, and SIP-4 is the response. The proposal was drafted and opened in the SKALE Forum on January 7, 2026, debated publicly, refined through community feedback, and moved to an official SKALE DAO vote on Snapshot on January 15, where it passed.
The headline is simple: burn half the revenue. 50% of aggregate SKALE-Expand revenue generated through the SKALE on Base chain is burned. The remaining 50% goes to the node operators securing that deployment.
As a reminder, per the prior forum posts and governance vote, this pricing model pertains only to the SKALE on Base chain currently. If the model is successful then the plan would be to expand the price model to all SKALE Chains such as SKALE Europa and across the network.
This does not change the economics or protocol design of the existing SKALE Ethereum deployment. SIP-4 governs SKALE Expand, which are new deployments of SKALE Manager beyond the original Ethereum one and the first of those is the beta launch on Base.
How the burn works
The mechanism is intentionally clean so it holds no matter where SKALE Manager is deployed or where SKALE Chains are created:
- Aggregate revenue equals all revenue tied to the sale of blockspace and SKALE-chain compute and technology. I.e., SKALE Chain subscriptions, sChain gas fees, and the sale of compute credits.
- 50% of that revenue is contributed back to the SKALE Network each month.
- If the revenue is already denominated in SKL, it is burned directly. If it’s in another asset, that revenue is used to buy SKL, which is then burned.
- A burn is defined precisely: SKL sent to the 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 address on Ethereum mainnet.
So even though SKALE Expand revenue can originate on Base or any future host chain, value capture routes back to Ethereum, where the burn is permanent and verifiable onchain.
Why this matters
SKALE Expand brings SKALE’s technology of limitless compute, Programmable Privacy, and the full product suite to other EVM ecosystems without giving up token value capture. The open question that came with that expansion was: how does usage anywhere strengthen the core network?
SIP-4 answers it by tying SKL burning directly to real economic activity rather than a fixed schedule; the burn scales with adoption. More blockspace sold, more credits purchased, more chains created all equals more SKL removed from circulation. Expansion without dilution: growth on Base and beyond flows value back to SKALE itself.
Leaving beta
The payment vehicle behind this has been running in an evolving beta as the SKALE-Expand experimentation kicked off. This is now moving out of that beta stage and into production.
The first revenue is about to flow through the live mechanism, which means the first burns are imminent. If you have transactions running through SKALE Expand, you are now part of the live economic loop SIP-4 describes.
Where to track it
- The proposal: SIP-4 on the SKALE Forum — SKL Burning & SKALE Expand Economics
- The vote: Approved via the SKALE DAO on Snapshot
- Burn status: Burns settle to the zero address on Ethereum mainnet and are publicly verifiable onchain
This is a first step, and a deliberately measured one. As SKALE Expand proves itself across more ecosystems, the model can be revisited and the parameters adjusted. For now: the vote happened, the engineering work has shipped, and SKL burning is live. Expectations should also be realistic at the start. This is a new model on a new chain and it will take some time to see burning making a huge impact. To make this happen the project needs to execute on capturing AI Agent Commerce market share. Our collective goal is to get millions of agents buying SKL gas credits due to the power of Programmable Privacy and superior onchain performance. Current momentum is strong and the open source developers, core team, validators, and app devs are working hard to make this happen.