On November 8, 2026, Vitalik Buterin revisited a familiar argument for ETH’s value: greater Ethereum activity generates more fees, which are burned and can offset new issuance. As Odaily reported on November 11, 2026, Buterin questioned whether that burn can serve as a reliable valuation floor. Fees driven by speculation may fall when markets cool. He still supported EIP-1559, but argued that pursuing high fees merely to sustain burns could harm Ethereum’s decentralization and long-term development—even if burns were to remain below 10% of new issuance.
Supply changes are not the same across chains
The article’s comparison shows why a single “burn rate” cannot explain every token:
- BTC: Supply is capped at approximately 21 million. At a 3.125 BTC block reward and an average ten-minute block interval, the article estimated roughly 164,300 new BTC a year, or 0.82% annual supply inflation.
- ETH: Supply had grown about 1.37% since the 2022 Merge. EIP-1559 burns base fees, but over the preceding 30 days, burns offset only about 3.2% of new issuance, according to the article.
- SOL: Solana’s initial annual inflation rate was 8%, declining by 15% each year toward a long-term target of 1.5%. Burns exceeded 10,000 SOL a day at one point during the 2024 meme-token surge and offset about 23% of issuance in January 2025. After SIMD-0096 directed all priority fees to validators, daily burns at one point fell to roughly 700 SOL; 50% of base fees remained subject to burning.
- BNB: Rather than relying on continuing issuance, BNB reduces supply through quarterly Auto-Burn and BEP-95 fee burns, toward a target of 100 million tokens. The article put its first four quarterly burns of 2026 at approximately 6.2 million BNB.
- TRX: TRON issues block rewards and burns certain resource fees. Users can also obtain resources by staking or renting them, so more USDT transfers do not necessarily mean proportionately more TRX burned.
- AVAX: Supply is capped at 720 million, while validator rewards add tokens and main-network fees are burned. By early November 2026, the article reported about 474 million AVAX minted, including roughly 114 million in staking rewards, against approximately 5.18 million burned.
- SUI: Its total supply is fixed at 10 billion; unlocks, rather than unlimited issuance, are a key source of growth in circulating supply. Tokens held by its Storage Fund can reduce freely circulating supply, but are not necessarily permanently burned.
What the burn-based model misses
The article revisited a simple model: divide the annual dollar value of burns by a discount rate. At a steady $1 billion burned annually and a 4% rate, it yields a $25 billion valuation. Its weakness is the word steady.
Odaily reported that Ethereum burned approximately 1.48 million ETH, worth about $3.6 billion, in 2022. From the start of 2026 through November 8, it reported approximately 19,200 ETH burned, worth about $43 million. Annualizing the latter figure to around $50 million produces a $1.25 billion valuation under the same model—versus an ETH market capitalization of about $270 billion at the time. That gap of more than 200 times does not establish a new price target. It shows how little of the market’s valuation this particular model explains.
Burns also miss value distributed through other channels: Solana priority fees go to validators, while TRON resource rentals may benefit stakers. Conversely, fees generated during a speculative boom may not persist. Burn figures can describe one form of value capture, but cannot by themselves measure every chain on the same basis.
Buterin emphasized decentralization, censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security as properties that could matter over the long term, particularly as AI develops. The article interpreted this as a possible shift toward a store-of-value case for ETH. That remains a harder claim to quantify than fee burns: demand for ETH as collateral, a medium of exchange or a native asset of on-chain finance may support a monetary premium, but ETH has no fixed supply cap and its issuance rules can change through protocol upgrades. The unresolved question is what evidence would sustain that premium over time—not whether a smaller burn number alone settles ETH’s value.
Original reporting: Odaily, November 11, 2026, 20:30 UTC+8.