io.net introduced a new token burning method tied directly to network revenue and said the model could remove up to 12 million IO tokens from distribution next year, as established GPU providers report increased business demand and record AI activity.
Summary
- io.net expects to burn up to 12 million IO tokens in the next year under a new revenue tokenomics model.
- 8 million business contracts and more than 4 billion AI tokens pushed the network’s revenue to record levels, according to the company.
- Provider payments are now tied to a stable value of the US dollar, while at least 50% of the payment network’s revenue after paying in IO tokens will be burned forever.
According to a press release shared with crypto.news, the first burn was scheduled for June 11, coinciding with the third anniversary of the network, with future burns funded by revenue from customer usage rather than the issuance of new tokens.
io.net bonds token burning for network revenue
Data released by io.net shows that at least 50% of the network’s post-payment revenue earned from IO tokens will be permanently destroyed under what the company calls the Incentive Dynamic Engine, or IDE. Based on revenue and its commercial pipeline, the company expects about 12 million tokens to be burned within the first year of the system.
The announcement comes as io.net reports its strongest sales period to date. The company revealed that it has signed an $8 million business deal, its largest contract to date, which it says contributes about $650,000 to the monthly on-chain network revenue. Additional business deals are currently in advanced negotiation stages, according to the company.
Beyond enterprise adoption, io.net said it has become the largest virtual infrastructure network, or DePIN, provider based on OpenRouter, an AI model routing platform used by developers to access multiple artificial intelligence models. The company’s statistics show that the network is now processing more than 4 billion speculative tokens each day while competing with mainstream cloud computing providers.
Those advances come as demand for AI computing resources continues to rise. Citing industry spending trends, io.net noted that major technology companies have invested more than $500 billion in AI infrastructure projects between 2025 and 2026. The company argued that access to high-performance graphics processing units remains limited by hyperscaler power constraints and pricing structures, creating opportunities for decentralized alternatives.
The new model seeks to stabilize provider wages
Alongside the burn-in process, io.net said the IDE was designed to address the storage challenges providers typically face with token-based infrastructure networks.
Under the framework, provider payments are linked to a stable value of the US dollar instead of fluctuating token prices. According to the company, reserve mechanisms absorb market volatility, allowing providers to maintain predictable earnings even during periods of token price weakness.
CryptoEcon Lab, a tokenomics research company that independently evaluated the system, tested the model under several stress conditions. The firm found to restore the provider remained stable during the simulation which included a 55% decrease in demand and a 50% decrease in the price of tokens, according to the results cited by io.net.
“Most of the token economies in our space are still built on the hope that prices go up. Ours is built on the belief that people are paying to use the network. That’s a very different foundation,” said Gaurav Sharma, CEO of io.net.
Looking beyond current operations, io.net said it is also developing capabilities that will allow AI agents to automatically discover and manage computing resources through its Agent Cloud platform. The company described the move as part of its effort to build a stable computing economy supported by global decentralized infrastructure providers.
