Mint / Minting

Minting is the creation of new tokens on a blockchain. A smart contract runs a mint function that increases the token's total supply and credits the new tokens to a specific address - bringing a token into existence and recording it on the ledger in one step. Its opposite is burning, which destroys tokens and reduces the supply.

For real-world assets, minting is how ownership gets issued. When an investor's purchase clears in a primary issuance, the issuer's contract mints the corresponding tokenized shares to the investor's approved address. The number of tokens minted should track the real position - shares sold, dollars subscribed, or units of the underlying asset deposited. A tokenized Treasury fund, for instance, mints new fund tokens as investors subscribe and burns them as they redeem, so the token supply mirrors assets under management.

Who can mint is a critical control. A permissionless token might let anyone mint, but a regulated security must not - the right to create new tokens is restricted to the issuer or an authorized agent, usually enforced by a role in the contract. If minting were open or compromised, someone could dilute every holder or manufacture tokens with no asset behind them.

Minting is also where the on-chain and off-chain records must stay in sync. The tokens are only meaningful if each one is matched by a real, enforceable claim - a share recorded by the transfer agent, a dollar of reserves, a unit of the asset. Minting more tokens than the asset supports is exactly the kind of mismatch a proof of reserves exists to catch.

Source: Ethereum docs (ethereum.org), as of 2026.