SHM is the ticker/currency symbol of Shardeum’s native token. SHM is the foundational monetary unit of Shardeum and serves a wide range of functions. Each SHM is divisible to 18 digits, similar to ETH on the Ethereum network.
SHM is a utility token with various uses, including:
SHM trading is live on leading crypto exchanges including Kucoin, LBank and MEXC. For full list of exchanges, please visit this webpage. More centralized and decentralized exchange listings are coming soon.
Any EVM-compatible wallet will work on Shardeum.
We are making an update to this answer. Your patience is appreciated.
In Phase 1, Shardeum is integrating proven, open-source EVM software into its Layer 1 network to accelerate adoption. Our current sharded token-only mainnet will transition into an unsharded EVM mainnet. With this foundation, Shardeum will accelerate user growth in the near term, prioritizing India, to lead in the world’s largest untapped on-chain market. Today, there are 500M+ crypto users worldwide, and about 80M are active on-chain. In India, over 50M use centralized exchanges, yet only a few million are on-chain. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to convert millions of people into true on-chain users.
Driving adoption in a market like India takes two parts: a reliable network and a token people can actually use with ease. The EVM delivers the first; the SHM token split delivers the second. On October 6, 2025, we invited the community to vote on redenominating SHM supply from 249 million to 60 billion. 85% of the community voted in favor of redenomination. Splitting (not inflating) SHM to a 1:240 ratio will increase the token count and lower per-token price creating a stronger sense of affordability, driving retail interest in fast-emerging markets like India. Several projects like Ripple (XRP) and Polkadot (DOT) have shown how a high token supply can drive accessibility and create significant potential as real utility expands. Moreover, this helps exchanges, wallets, dApps, and first-time users onboard SHM more easily, creating a network effect favoring high adoption.
With the launch of Shardeum’s EVM mainnet, SHM will undergo a 1:240 token split (redenomination), meaning every 1 old SHM converts into 240 new SHM. This does not change the overall value of a holder’s balance – only the unit count and price per unit adjust proportionally. The redenomination makes SHM more accessible for everyday use cases, microtransactions, and mass adoption in markets like India, while exchanges and wallets will automatically update balances to reflect the change. In short, holders don’t need to take any action: the split simply makes SHM easier to use and transact with at scale.
Example: If you hold 100 SHM valued at $5 today, after token split you’ll hold 24,000 SHM valued at $5.
Coming to tokenomics, the 60B supply is simply the redenominated version of the original ~250M initial supply at the time of the token-only mainnet launch – nothing in the allocations have changed. As outlined in the whitepaper, validator rewards will still come from ongoing issuance, designed to keep the network secure and to ensure validators are always incentivized. What’s different is that the validator rewards may now follow a fixed issuance schedule rather than a dynamic model, which is by the way, a technical adjustment required by the validator design of the adopted EVM software. Instead of generating rewards dynamically, a fixed issuance schedule may define the supply allocated to validators each year.
The redenomination ratio of 1:240 was chosen to bring SHM’s total supply into a range that is common among leading blockchains. Several L1s today have supplies between 10B and 100B tokens. The purpose of this split is to make transactions and transfers easier and more accessible, particularly as we focus on developing India’s on-chain ecosystem – one of the world’s largest untapped opportunities. This encourages broader participation, and supports long-term adoption of the network. Several projects like XRP have shown how a high token supply can drive accessibility and create significant potential as real utility expands.
You can find the latest tutorials here. Advanced users can check our developer docs if needed. Please note that these resources are being updated, and the exact details will be available in the coming days/weeks. We appreciate your patience.
We are making an update to this answer. Your patience is appreciated.
As noted in this blog, Shardeum is serious about decentralization from the get go and we had decided to raise funds across a large number of ECA participants and angels. Our goal here is to maximize the distribution of SHM and not to have a select few participants owning a majority of tokens. Our cap table so far includes diverse global institutional, VCs and angels that are motivated to help us build Shardeum and grow the Web3 ecosystem.
We also concluded airdrops for our ecosystem and community members for the pre-mainnet period. We will also have airdrop campaigns planned post-mainnet. All these factors along with SHM’supply model are designed to make SHM highly decentralized and useful.
Further, Shardeum launched its public token sale on March 19, 2025 that ran until May 4, 2025. The sale was open to early supporters and public from $0.66 to $0.90 per SHM. The community was enabled to participate with as little as $50 and up to $1 million.
