Steak Pool: a deflationary store-of-value token on Algorand

Most "deflationary" tokens have a flaw: their burns come from a finite treasury, which means deflation stops the day the treasury runs out. Most "store of value" tokens have a different flaw: the value claim is purely narrative, with nothing intrinsic backing the price floor. Steak Pool combines a perpetual burn mechanism with a growing redeemable reserve to address both.

STEAK is an Algorand Standard Asset (ASA 2595619475). Total supply was minted at genesis and is fixed at 17,000,000 tokens with 6 decimals. The clawback, freeze, and reserve-redirect authorities are all set to the Algorand zero address. That means supply can only ever decrease, no party can freeze your balance, and no party can confiscate your tokens.

Steak Pool operates Réti validator #13. Réti is the Algorand Foundation's open-pooling protocol that lets any holder delegate ALGO to a validator without giving up custody. The validator earns block rewards (currently ~10 ALGO/block decaying 1% per million blocks, plus a share of network transaction fees), keeps a small commission, and distributes the rest to delegators. Our commission has exactly one destination: the buyback wallet.

Validator commission flows to an immutable Algorand smart contract: the AutoBurn contract, app id 3551596743. Once the contract has accumulated enough ALGO, the buyback fires: the contract atomically swaps 90% of its balance on Tinyman v2 and forwards the resulting STEAK to BNFIREKGRXEHCFOEQLTX3PU5SUCMRKDU7WHNBGZA4SXPW42OAHZBP7BPHY. That target is a vanity-prefixed Algorand address whose private key was never created by any party and cannot exist. Funds sent there are provably unspendable.

Trust properties of the AutoBurn contract: no admin key, no operator override. The only mutable parameter is the Tinyman swap target, gated by a 3-of-5 timelocked migration multisig with a 30-day on-chain notice period. The contract cannot be upgraded or deleted (no methods are exposed for it). Source code, audited TEAL artifacts, and deploy scripts live in contracts/smart_contracts/auto_burn/ in the project repo. Burn history is verifiable via a single indexer query against the BNFIRE wallet. The /transparency page renders the full chronological ledger, refreshed every 60 seconds.

Delegators to Réti validator #13 receive two streams. The first is the standard Algorand consensus reward, paid in ALGO and distributed automatically by the Réti contract. The second is a STEAK reward, distributed by the Réti contract from our staker rewards wallet (see /transparency for the live wallet balance). The exact daily distribution is set in the Réti validator config and is visible on-chain; the calculator on /stake reads it directly. Net effect: a delegator earns ALGO yield, accumulates STEAK exposure directly, and watches additional STEAK get burned by the validator commission. The same act of delegation activates three different value streams.

Buybacks alone create downward pressure on supply but cannot guarantee a price floor. Phase 2 introduces a treasury-backing layer: a separate, transparently-audited wallet accumulates productive assets (ALGO, gALGO from Folks Finance, perhaps a small position in USDC for stability). Once the treasury reaches a threshold, holders gain the right to burn STEAK in exchange for a pro-rata share of treasury assets. This makes the store-of-value claim mathematical rather than aspirational: each STEAK becomes redeemable for a known minimum quantity of underlying ALGO. The redemption mechanism is still being designed; this page will update before it ships.

A separate ASA, distinct from STEAK, will represent membership tiers (working names: Brisket, Wagyu, Dry-Aged). Tier eligibility is determined by verified STEAK held in wallet over a snapshot window. Members get role-gated access to community features, priority allocation in any future releases, and (eventually) physical perks via partner programs. Membership NFTs do not change STEAK supply or affect price directly. They sit as a separate utility layer.

STEAK is a small-cap cryptocurrency. The price can go to zero. Validator rewards depend on the Algorand network continuing to operate and on the Foundation's bonus schedule. Smart-contract risk is minimized: the AutoBurn contract is deployed immutably with no admin key, audited TEAL artifacts are checked into the public repo, and the only mutable parameter (Tinyman swap target) is gated by a 3-of-5 multisig with a 30-day on-chain notice period. Bug-class risk still cannot be fully eliminated. Regulatory treatment of utility tokens is uncertain. Do not invest more than you can afford to lose.