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
A true on-chain burn destroys token units. Protected Burn & Close uses a transfer instead. It does not reduce the token's total supply, and it should not be understood as a way to improve a token's economics by destroying part of its supply.
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.
Eligible tokens remain recoverable for 48 hours. Recovery is not automatic, and the website does not provide an automated return tool. Treat the window as a limited recovery policy, not a reason to skip checking your selection or assume that approving an unwanted transfer has no consequences.
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 reviewed preview assigns network and vault-account setup costs to the sponsor. It also checks the expected network fee and uses bounded compute pricing. These are properties of the prepared plan, not a request for users to send an extra payment to unlock their accounts.
No cost is actually charged by the current non-broadcast signing test. The sponsor does not sign that preview, and the wallet's returned signatures are discarded. A displayed plan and a completed wallet approval do not by themselves mean tokens moved or rent was recovered.
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.
The signing preview requires the returned transaction message to match the reviewed message exactly. Adding the user's signature is expected; adding instructions or changing transaction contents is not. If the wallet changes the message, the test discards the result rather than accepting an unreviewed plan.
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.