What Is DIMO (DIMO)? The Car Data Token Whose Holders Voted a 150M Burn

DIMO's car-data network links vehicles to apps. In a vote that closed 24 August 2026, holders approved burning 150 million DIMO, 15% of the 1 billion cap. Drivers connect cars by app or adapter, and developers pay fees in DIMO. It closed 29 September up 27.20% on CoinMarketCap, and our 30 September supply read found the 150 million unburned.

CoinMarketCap's 29 September bar closed at $0.0147448 on $1.71 million of volume, 15.07 times the day before. That was about 40 times the $42,895 held in DEX pools at 13:22 UTC on 30 September, and no DIMO announcement explains it. Ethereum supply read 998,893,318.64 DIMO at 13:16 UTC that day, down 0.11% from the cap after three smaller burns on 21 September.

What Is DIMO (DIMO)?

DIMO stands for Digital Infrastructure for Moving Objects, pronounced "Dee-Moe" according to its Foundation. The DIMO Foundation's explainer says the network "makes every vehicle a programmable, session-aware device, accessible via API". In practice, an app can read your car's location or battery level once you opt in, until you revoke that access.

The DIMO token is the crypto layer of that system. It pays for vehicle data and gives holders a vote on the protocol, which puts DIMO in the sector covered by our guide to what DePIN is and how it works.

Drivers built the network's supply side, past 200,000 vehicles on four continents by DIP-12's count, and DIMO's site lists more than 50 connected car brands.

DIMO dates to 2021, and DIP-12 names the independent company that first developed it as Digital Infrastructure Inc. Its mainnet launched on 12 December 2022, and the DIMO Foundation runs the treasury and puts protocol changes to holder votes.

Why Is DIMO Trending?

DIMO is trending because of one daily bar. CoinMarketCap's 29 September bar opened at $0.0115916 and closed 17.86% below its $0.0179519 intraday high, on $1,712,376 of volume against $113,614 on 28 September.

Method: we read CoinMarketCap's daily bars at 13:14 and 13:23 UTC on 30 September, and both reads matched. Our second feed, CoinGecko, has the day up 26.06%. Over the seven days from the 22 September close the gain reached 66.72% on CoinMarketCap and 66.04% on CoinGecko.

DexScreener's 13:22 UTC read split the $42,895 of pool liquidity as $33,179 on Polygon and the rest on Ethereum, with nothing on Base. Our explainer on what a liquidity pool is covers how DEX pools like these work.

The DIMO blog's newest post is from 6 July 2026, so the dated record comes from governance and the chain.

Holders voted on DIP-12, "The Protocol Direction" from 17 to 24 August 2026, and it took effect after a four-day timelock. It orders a one-time burn of 150 million DIMO from the treasury and ends weekly driver issuance.

At 19:25 UTC on 21 September, one wallet triggered burns in three contracts holding DIMO and destroyed 1,106,681.36 tokens. No earlier block we sampled, back to late October 2025, showed Ethereum supply below 1 billion. At 14:10 UTC on 22 September, the same wallet submitted a Polygon bridge exit that landed 179,999,307.76 DIMO in a 3-of-5 Safe. The Foundation's wallets page gives that address as its Polygon DIMO treasury. This page treats neither event as the cause of the 29 September buying.

How Does DIMO Work?

DIMO works as a permissioned data pipe between cars and apps. You connect through the DIMO Mobile app, which links many newer cars wirelessly, or plug in an adapter such as the DIMO LTE R1. You grant and revoke each app's access, and DIMO logs that access on a signed ledger anyone can check.

Developers pay through DIMO Credit (DCX), a credit fixed at $0.0001 that you can only buy with DIMO and that burns once spent, according to DIP-10. At the 29 September close of $0.0147448, one DIMO bought about 147 DCX. DIP-12 splits the DIP-3 fee pool 40% to the nodes that run the network and 60% to the Foundation.

Drivers used to earn new DIMO weekly under baseline issuance. It started at 1,105,000 a week in December 2022 and fell 15% a year to about 678,600 before DIP-12 ended it, so guides quoting 1,105,000 a week are out of date.

DIMO Tokenomics

DIMO tokenomics start on Ethereum, and DIP-12 says the token "has always lived on Ethereum". The canonical contract is 0x5fab9761d60419c9eeebe3915a8fa1ed7e8d2e1b, and DIP-10 lists the bridged versions at 0x5eAA326fB2fc97fAcCe6A79A304876daD0F2e96c on Base and Optimism and 0xE261D618a959aFfFd53168Cd07D12E37B26761db on Polygon.

Method: our on-chain reads at 13:16 UTC on 30 September returned an Ethereum total supply of 998,893,318.64 DIMO at block 26,090,538. CoinGecko counts 504,434,407 of those as circulating, about half, and that gap is what our guide to circulating supply versus total supply explains.

The DIMO Foundation's distribution page gives the original split of 1 billion tokens as 450 million for drivers, 250 million for the treasury and 300 million for the team and investors. The last block releases 1/36 a month from 12 January 2025, which by our arithmetic left about 125 million locked after the 12 September 2026 step.

The DIMO burn is the change holders voted for. DIP-12 orders a 150 million burn from the treasury, posted on-chain, and says it leaves the Foundation about 17.6% of a supply near 850 million. It also ends issuance that ran at about 35,287,200 DIMO a year, 7.0% of CoinGecko's circulating count.

The chain read differently at 13:16 UTC on 30 September. The wallets the Foundation lists as its own held 339.5 million DIMO, or 34.0% of the Ethereum supply, and the tokens that reached the Safe on 22 September hadn't moved. Take 150 million off both sides and those wallets would still hold 22.3%. Our glossary entry on what it means to burn crypto explains how a burn takes tokens out of supply.

The Ethereum token is an upgradeable proxy, and our role reads on 30 September found one 3-of-5 Safe holding its admin and upgrade roles. That Safe can also mint new DIMO or pause transfers, and the wallets page names it as admin on the token contracts.

Which DIMO Contract Is the Real One?

The real DIMO is the Ethereum contract above plus the bridged addresses DIP-10 lists. CoinGecko names Polygon as DIMO's platform and shows an IoTeX address that appears nowhere on the Foundation's list, so check any address against DIP-10 before you trade. Its total supply field read a flat 1 billion on 30 September.

How to Buy DIMO Safely

Phemex lists no DIMO market, spot or futures, so buying DIMO means using a decentralized exchange. Copy the contract from DIP-10 or the DIP-12 disclaimer and paste it into the swap screen yourself, because the address is the one thing a copycat token can't fake.

Then size the order to the pool. The largest DIMO pool on DexScreener held $29,352 at 13:22 UTC on 30 September, paired with wrapped POL on Polygon, and no Ethereum pool held more than $6,722. An order of a few thousand dollars is a big share of either, so set a slippage limit before you confirm. Our guide to managing slippage in cryptoexplains how slippage happens and how to cap it.

What Are the Risks of DIMO?

A bridge contract emptied on 6 November 2025

At 18:29 UTC on 6 November 2025, the single-key wallet that owned DIMO's Wormhole bridge contract on Ethereum upgraded it to unverified code. Twenty-four seconds later, 29,999,307.76 DIMO left for another single-key wallet, which began routing tokens into DEX pools within seven minutes. The same key restored the contract at 00:17 UTC on 7 November and passed ownership to a Foundation-listed admin address about a minute later, at 00:19 UTC.

CoinGecko's close fell 25.18% that day, from $0.0352003 to $0.0263376. At the 5 November close the withdrawn tokens came to about $1.06 million, a notional we derived. The 179,999,307.76 DIMO that reached the Safe on 22 September equals 150 million plus that figure to the last decimal, and no Foundation document we read explains the match.

One venue carried 95.7% of the volume

At 13:22 UTC on 30 September, CoinGecko's venue table put 95.7% of DIMO's trailing 24-hour volume on one centralised exchange and 1.9% in DEX pools. A delisting or a deposit halt at that venue would leave the thin DEX pools as the whole market.

The Foundation holds mint and pause powers

Three signatures on that admin Safe are enough to add supply or freeze transfers. DIP-12 says the Foundation still holds upgrade authority over certain protocol contracts under DIP-6 and makes no commitment about giving it up.

A treasury bigger than the burn

The listed wallets held more than twice the 150 million the vote ordered burned. DIP-13 ties treasury sales to holder-approved budgets, but it allows a transition of up to 180 days and an emergency allowance of up to $1 million a year. Team and investor releases add about 8.3 million DIMO a month on the original schedule until around the end of 2027.

Five addresses carried the vote

The DIP-12 vote on Snapshot closed with 47,274,250 votes For and none Against, cast by five addresses against a 35,000,000 quorum. One address supplied 38,786,976 of them, 82.0% of the total and enough to clear quorum alone. The whole For tally came to 4.7% of the Ethereum supply, and DIP-13 passed with four voters.

The burn has no deadline

DIP-12 took effect after its timelock at the end of August and gives the Foundation no date for the 150 million burn. Until the Ethereum supply drops by that amount, anyone pricing a 15% smaller supply is pricing a promise.

Is DIMO a Good Investment?

DIMO is a bet that paid vehicle-data access will create demand for the token after driver rewards stopped, and on the dated data supply control is the weak point. For the case to firm up, the Ethereum supply would need to fall by 150 million with the transaction posted, and the next vote would need more than five addresses behind it.

CoinGecko's 29 September close of $0.014626 was 74.70% below its 29 September 2025 close and 98.11% above its 29 August close.

It suits a holder who reads governance proposals and checks supply on-chain. It doesn't suit a buyer who needs to sell size quickly, because on-chain depth ran to five figures at the 30 September read.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is DIMO legit?

DIMO's about page says its core protocol is open source and names it a 2026 MotorTrend Group Software-Defined Vehicle Award finalist.

Who created DIMO?

The company that first developed DIMO is Digital Infrastructure Inc., and DIMO's about page names Yevgeny "Yev" Khessin as CEO and co-founder. He co-founded it in 2021 as CTO and became CEO in 2026, after connected-vehicle work at General Motors and OnStar.

Has DIMO burned the 150 million tokens?

Not at our 13:16 UTC read on 30 September. DIP-12 says any burn goes to a public burn address on Ethereum and gets posted with its transaction, and the Polygon version's supply read 462,738,078 DIMO at the same time.

What is the DIMO price?

CoinMarketCap closed DIMO at $0.0147448 on 29 September 2026, a $7.44 million market value on CoinGecko's circulating count. CoinGecko puts the all-time high at $0.785628 on 18 December 2023 and the low at $0.0057111 on 26 June 2026, both intraday. Its 29 September close of $0.014626 stood 98.1% below that high and 2.56 times that low.

Final Thoughts

DIMO's holders voted to cut supply by 15%, and at the 30 September read Ethereum supply stood only 0.11% below the cap. The 21 September burns and the 22 September transfer came before the rally, while the 150 million stayed on the books. Watch the Ethereum supply. At about 848.9 million the burn is real, and on the 30 September balances the Foundation's listed wallets would still sit above the 20% line its own proposal drew.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.