Pepe Coin ($PEPE), an ERC-20 meme token on Ethereum, employs a deflationary burning mechanism to reduce its total supply over time, aiming to create scarcity and potentially boost value. Unlike some tokens with automatic transaction taxes, $PEPE's original smart contract launched without built-in burn fees or taxes, as confirmed by early analyses . Instead, burns occur through manual, community-driven, or event-based actions via the contract's burn function, which permanently sends tokens to an inaccessible "dead" wallet. Key Burning Methods Manual Burns: Developers or holders send tokens directly to a burn address (e.g., 0x000...dead), removing them from circulation irreversibly. A major example was the April 2023 launch event, where 210 trillion tokens—half the initial 420.69 trillion supply—were burned to kickstart scarcity .dApp and Protocol Burns: Interactions with decentralized apps or partner protocols can trigger burns as part of their functionality .No Automated Transaction Burns: Claims of 1% per-transaction burns (e.g., "PepeBurn") appear in some sources but contradict the tax-free contract design, which cannot be modified post-launch . Tokenomics Impact The fixed, non-mintable supply relies on these burns to combat inflation, with no new tokens creatable . This has led to gradual supply reduction, though effects on price depend on demand; past burns correlated with hype-driven rallies. Holders benefit indirectly via scarcity, but liquidity and volatility risks persist without redistribution taxes . Track burns via Etherscan on the official contract (0x6982508145454Ce325dDbE47a25d4ec3d2311933) for transparency. Functionality of this contract:
The contract at 0x6982508145454Ce325dDbE47a25d4ec3d2311933 is the verified ERC-20 token implementation for Pepe (PEPE) on Ethereum, using OpenZeppelin Contracts v4.4.0 with Solidity ^0.8.0 . It deploys a standard, non-upgradable ERC20 contract inheriting from Context, IERC20, and IERC20Metadata, featuring basic token operations without custom taxes, minting, or pausing logic .
Transfer Functions: transfer(address recipient, uint256 amount) moves tokens from sender to recipient; transferFrom(address from, address to, uint256 amount) enables approved spends; emits Transfer events .
Key Limitations No built-in burn function beyond standard ERC20 transfers to dead addresses (e.g., 0x000...000), no ownership controls post-renounce, and immutable supply mechanics prevent further minting . Full source and ABI are public on Etherscan for interaction via wallets or dApps .