SHM is Shardeum’s native utility and governance token, powering all on‑chain operations on the network. It serves as the unit of account for transaction fees, staking collateral, and reward distributions. Designed for divisibility up to 18 decimal places, SHM functions much like ETH does on Ethereum but with a fixed, dynamically managed supply model. As a governance token, SHM holders participate in protocol upgrades and parameter adjustments, though Shardeum employs a non‑linear voting system rather than one‑token‑one‑vote. By aligning economic incentives with network security, SHM underpins Shardeum’s promise of “low gas fees forever” through its dynamic state sharding and autoscaling features.
