What is the Avalanche (AVAX) inflation rate?

+3.19% a year, and +0.80% in the next 90 days. That is new AVAX minus what is burned or bought back, checked Oct 12 2026.

Is AVAX inflationary or deflationary?

Inflationary: AVAX's supply is growing, about +3.19% a year.

Where does new AVAX supply come from?

Staking rewards of about 2.0M AVAX a quarter (falling as the Helicon reward cut phases in) plus the Foundation's 1.67M AVAX quarterly unlock until 2030.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework · Inflation Analysis

AVAX Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

Avalanche (AVAX) supply is growing: in the 90 days to Oct 12 2026, staking rewards added 2.19M AVAXand the Avalanche Foundation's quarterly genesis tranche added 1.67M AVAX, while the fee burn destroyed only 70.7K AVAX. Net supply rose +0.85% over 90 days and we project about +0.80% for the next 90, against a monitor reading of +2.62%. AVAX has a hard cap of 720M coins, so the staking mint slows as supply gets closer to it.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Our ledger puts AVAX net supply growth at +0.85% for the 90 days from Jul 14 to Oct 12 2026: about 3.86M AVAX entered the float and 70.7K AVAX was burned, on a circulating supply of 443.35M AVAX. The inflation monitor reads +2.62% for nearly the same window, a gap of 1.77 percentage points, which is above our 0.5-point line, so the page carries a monitor-gap note. The gap does not come from a missing flow. The supply figure the monitor reads stood near 431.8M AVAX from Apr 21 to Sep 11 2026, then jumped 10.74M AVAX on Sep 12 2026 to catch up with coins released earlier; most of that jump belongs to months before this window. For the next 90 days we expect +0.80%. In one line: Avalanche is a capped proof-of-stake chain that is still inflationary by design, paying stakers in new AVAX and unlocking the Foundation's share every quarter.

Sell pressure: where new AVAX comes from

Protocol inflation. Staking rewards are the largest source of new AVAX: 2,189,306 AVAXin 90 days, about 24,300 a day. Avalanche sets each stake's reward when the stake starts and pays it when the stake ends; the network's supply count rises at the start, and that count is what we measured at both ends of the window. About 186.2M AVAX is staked today. The rewards actually paid by validations that ended inside the window came to 2.62M AVAX, and the reward rate those validators earned works out to about 5.7% a year, so the measurements agree. The Helicon upgrade, live on mainnet since Sep 22 2026, lowers the floor of the staking reward curve from 10% to 7.5% in a straight line over 90 days. Long stakes keep their rate; short ones earn less. Re-running every live stake through that ramp gives about 2.01M AVAX of new rewards in the next 90 days, roughly 8% less than the last 90.

Vesting unlocks.The Avalanche Foundation's genesis allocation unlocks in equal quarterly tranches written into the chain's genesis file. 1,666,800 AVAX opened on Aug 10 2026, inside this window, and the same amount opens on Nov 8 2026, inside the next one. After November, 25.0M AVAX stays locked, released at the same pace until Jul 2030. These coins sit outside the circulating count until each tranche opens, so every unlock is real new supply for the market. The team and early-sale allocations finished vesting long ago.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocksbook zero. The Foundation's unlocked coins are already circulating, so selling them would move coins between holders, not create new ones. Long-term locked or bankruptcyalso books zero: no estate or trustee holds AVAX, and the treasury companies' restricted coins are already counted as circulating.

Buy pressure: where new AVAX goes

Protocol fee burn.Every fee paid on Avalanche's main chains is destroyed. On the C-Chain, where most activity happens, fees removed 68,612 AVAX in 90 days, read from the burn address at both ends of the window. Fees that the chains running on Avalanche pay each second to keep their validators removed about 2,100 AVAX more, for a total of 70.7K AVAX. The burn sped up at the end of the window: 41,739 AVAX in the last 30 days alone. Helicon also lets validators vote on the C-Chain's minimum gas price, and they raised it in late September; the base fee went from well under one nAVAX to 5 nAVAX by Sep 28 2026. At the burn rate since then, we expect about 137K AVAX burned in the next 90 days, still far below new rewards.

Programmatic buyback is zero: no program buys AVAX back. Foundation buyis zero too, even though the Foundation bought 2,082,372 AVAX from a listed treasury company on Sep 23 2026 for $15M, because those coins were already circulating and stayed in the Foundation's hands. New long-term lock is zero: about 186.2M AVAX is staked, but staked AVAX still counts as circulating, so staking drives the rewards without taking coins out of the float.

Foundation and overhang

The Avalanche Foundation is the one team holder we track. Its locked genesis share holds 26.67M AVAX, all of it staked while locked, and it leaves the lock at 1,666,800 AVAX per quarter; we read it from the chain each rebuild. Its already-unlocked coins include 2.74M AVAX staked on its genesis addresses, plus the 2.08M AVAX it bought back on Sep 23 2026, held in wallets it does not publish, so we follow those through its own disclosures. Treasury companies and funds that hold AVAX are market holders, not team wallets. If any of these Foundation balances falls between refreshes, the outflow enters the Foundation row at the next refresh.

How AVAX compares to other proof-of-stake Layer 1s

Avalanche sits between two common designs. Like Bitcoin, it has a hard cap, 720M AVAX, but it reaches the cap through a staking reward that shrinks as supply rises instead of through halvings. Like Ethereum, it destroys fees, but on Avalanche every fee is burned, not only a base part. The difference today is scale: Ethereum's fee burn is also small next to its issuance, while AVAX's 90-day burn of 70.7K AVAX covers under 2% of its new supply.

Against uncapped staking chains such as Solana or Cosmos-style networks, AVAX's reward curve is unusual because it pays more for longer stakes and is now steeper after Helicon, which pushes stakers toward longer commitments. Like many younger chains, AVAX also carries a scheduled foundation unlock; at about 1.67M AVAX a quarter, it adds about 0.38% of circulating supply each time, smaller than staking rewards but steady until 2030.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Nov 8 2026:the Foundation's next genesis tranche of 1,666,800 AVAX opens; it is already in our forecast.

Around Dec 21 2026: the Helicon reward-floor ramp reaches 7.5%; stakes started after that earn the lower rate in full.

The C-Chain gas floor: validators can move the minimum gas price up or down by vote; a cut would shrink the burn we forecast, a rise would grow it.

Foundation wallets and treasury companies: any sign the Foundation is selling the coins it bought back, or that treasury companies are unloading AVAX as their sale limits end, would show up as market pressure even though it is not new supply.

Summary

AVAX supply grew +0.85% in the 90 days to Oct 12 2026 and we project +0.80%for the next 90. Avalanche pays stakers about 2.19M new AVAX a quarter and unlocks 1.67M AVAX of the Foundation's genesis share every quarter until 2030, while burning every fee, which removed only 70.7K AVAX. The Helicon upgrade lowers new staking rewards and has raised the fee floor, so the gap is narrowing slowly, but new supply is still more than 25 times the burn. The 720M cap is the ceiling: rewards shrink as supply approaches it.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of AVAX, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 12 2026.