As a non-profit entity, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), has the sole purpose to make Stellar the global standard for payments. Thus, in order to accomplish this and move the project further, a resource burn had to be carried out, halving the total supply of Stellar in the network.
The Burn and What Remains
The resources up to the moment of the removing of half the assets were 105 billion Lumens that were in existence, which were divided roughly 20 billion in circulation for users, 17 billion in the operating fund of the Foundation and 68 billion were locked away for giveaway programs and were monitored by the SDF. Just before the Foundation made the announcement, they burned 5 billion XLM from their operating fund, leaving it at 12 billion. They believe in efficiency while following their goal and have made a plan for the next 10 years of Stellar’s development.
SDF made the decision to end Stellar’s World Giveaway Program for individual airdrops and the Partner Giveaway program. From the Lumens that were set aside for them, 50 billion of the 68 were burned. The team advised that further burns will not be carried out and this one was carried out by sending the XLM to an account with no signers with a master key weight of 0. What is left as total supply, are 50 billion lumens, out of which 20 billion are out in the world and 30 billion are under the administration of the Foundation.
Development Program and The Rest
A part of the remaining XLMs under the administration of the Foundation will be dedicated to an aggressive development program, which will also involve more people working at SDF. The XLM will come from the Operations Program, which consists of 12 billion Lumens. The Stellar Development Foundation will be making a decade long commitment as Stellar’s partner along with many other companies working with the project. Continuation of the work on stellar-core and a network platform above it will carry on, but there will also be new technologies researched, rework of policies, more community tools, educational materials and documentation. The 12 billion XLM has been escrowed and will unlock at 3 billion per year.
For the original World Giveaway pool, only 6 billion XLM will be kept due to the lower efficiency in program performance. These Lumens will still go towards the original intent of the giveaway, and that is to increase awareness and adoption of the network. They will be divided into two parts, where 2 billion will be towards indirect support like marketing, PR and communications, while the other 4 billion will be distributed over apps that people use every day. These in-app distributions will go towards funding user acquisition for Stellar-built apps and services. They might be airdropped or through more subtle forms of direct user support, such as offsetting onboarding fees or deposit fees.
Roughly 8 billion XLM will go towards the Stellar Enterprise Fund, which is a leaner and reimagined version of the old partnership program that the network had. The Lumens will be distributed as grants but will be used to either invest in or acquire businesses that have potential to benefit the Stellar ecosystem. 2 billion Lumens will be distributed for new products that will be built and owned by the SDF to fill the gaps in the ecosystem. With the remaining 2 billion, infrastructure grants and currency support will be improved with 1 billion XLM each.
Conclusion
As you can see, the Stellar Developer Foundation is taking big steps towards being a better partner to the Stellar network and showing their fierce dedication to the “greater good” of the project. The fact that they have laid down a 10-year plan for development and improvements shows just how much they are confident in their ability to provide the best for Stellar. If you would like to see the session and get more information from the SDF themselves, you can check out the latest video from their official channel on youtube called SDF’s Next Steps.