How Protected Burn & Close Works
Protected Burn & Close is a way to remove selected eligible unwanted tokens and recover SOL from their source accounts. Despite the name, it is not an immediate permanent on-chain token burn. The assets move to Refundary's Recovery Vault before eligible emptied accounts are closed.
Follow the asset and the rent separately
There are two balances involved. The token balance is the unwanted asset you select. The SOL balance in its source account supports that account's storage. Moving the token and releasing the account's rent are different steps in the same intended cleanup plan.
The flow is: select an eligible unwanted token, transfer its full validated balance to the Recovery Vault, close the eligible empty source account, and return the recovered rent to your wallet. The destination for the token is the vault; the destination for recovered rent is the user.
This is not the right option for a token you want to keep holding in your wallet. If your goal is only to recover excess storage SOL while preserving a holding, inspect the separate Rent Recovery opportunity where supported.
What the Recovery Vault changes
Protected Burn & Close transfers tokens to Refundary's Recovery Vault first. They stay there for 48 hours before being burned, giving you time to correct an accidental selection.
The Recovery Vault is the destination for selected eligible assets. Removing a token from your wallet does not erase its transaction history or make the token disappear from the blockchain. It changes where those units are held.
If you transferred tokens by mistake, contact support within 48 hours of the transfer so Refundary can return them before they are burned.
Eligibility deliberately stays narrow
Not every token is a safe candidate for this flow. Refundary currently restricts Protected Burn to supported classic fungible tokens and checks source-account ownership, balance, authority and mint state before constructing the preview.
NFT-like and zero-decimal assets are excluded. Token-2022 assets and unsupported extension cases are excluded from this flow too. Other reasons for exclusion include frozen or freezable assets, delegation, unsuitable authority settings, wrapped SOL and ambiguous account layouts.
These exclusions do not label every skipped asset malicious. They mean the current implementation is unwilling to assume that its transfer-and-close rules safely cover that asset. NFT support is not part of the current feature.
Why the whole selected balance matters
An ordinary source account cannot simply be closed while it still contains the selected fungible token. The validated full amount needs to leave first. A balance change after scanning can therefore invalidate the plan.
Suppose you select a token and then receive another transfer of it. The original preview no longer describes the full source balance. Revalidation should require a fresh review rather than quietly transferring an amount that no longer matches the selection.
Batching several assets does not remove these individual checks. Each asset must qualify independently, and the final transaction must be simulated. An unsupported item should not turn unrelated eligible selections into a less carefully validated group.
Understand the fee and who pays setup
The Protected Burn success fee is 15% of recovered token-account rent, calculated in integer lamports. It is not a percentage of a token's displayed market price. Review the gross rent, fee and net SOL together so the result is clear.
The executable review shows who pays the network fee. Refundary sponsors it when available; otherwise a supported transaction requires enough user SOL for the reviewed network fee. Required Recovery Vault setup is funded by Refundary, subject to its setup caps and balance checks, and is separate from the user's recovered rent.
A successful live transaction transfers the selected balance, closes the source account and pays the reviewed fee. A displayed estimate or wallet approval alone does not prove those actions completed.
What to inspect in the wallet
Check that only the assets you selected are outgoing, that the intended token destination is the Recovery Vault, and that recovered rent is directed back to your wallet. Compare the service fee with the reviewed amount.
Refundary validates the wallet-returned transaction against the immutable reviewed plan. Only narrowly validated wallet changes that preserve the reviewed economics and account permissions are accepted; unexplained changes are rejected.
Before selecting a token with an unfamiliar name, check its mint and think about whether you may want it later. If it has a usable sale route, Sell Dust might better match your goal. If you merely dislike seeing it, hiding it is another option, although hiding alone cannot recover its account rent.