AVAX Inflation Analysis · July 2026 · The staking mint now outruns a shrunken fee burn

Avalanche is a hard-capped proof-of-stake chain — 720M AVAX maximum, with ~431.8M circulating. The protocol mints new AVAX as staking rewards, about 3.4M over 90 days, and a quarterly Foundation vesting cliff adds another 1.67M on Aug 10 2026. On the other side, every C-Chain fee is burned — but after the ACP-125 base-fee cut, that burn is only about 0.11M over 90 days, a fraction of the mint. The framework reads net supply at +1.15%. Our supply monitor reads +0.031%, a gap of about 1.1 percentage points — a circulating-classification effect — so a monitor-gap flag is raised.

The verdict, in one paragraph

For the 90-day window beginning July 13 2026, the MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads Avalanche at about +1.15% net supply growth — roughly 5.07M AVAX of new supply from staking emission and the Foundation vesting cliff, offset by only about 0.11M of fee burn. Our supply monitor reads the realized last-90-day change at +0.031%, essentially flat, a gap of about 1.1 percentage points, which does raise a monitor-gap flag. The gap is structural, not an error: the monitor's circulating-supply base held AVAX near-flat at ~431.8M because newly-minted staking rewards are classified as staked or non-float and the Foundation cliff lands in custody, while the framework counts the real on-chain mint toward the 720M cap. Both readings agree on direction once you look at total minted supply — Avalanche is inflating. The right label is structurally inflationary on the staking mint, with a fee burn too small to offset it.

Sell pressure: where new AVAX comes from

The dominant sell force is protocol inflation — the staking mint — about 3.4M AVAX over the next 90 days. On Avalanche, all validator income is newly minted: transaction fees are burned rather than paid to validators, so the entire staking reward is fresh supply issued toward the 720M hard cap. With roughly 201.9M AVAX staked — a 46.76% staking ratio — earning about 6.8% a year, the protocol mints on the order of 3.4M AVAX a quarter. The second sell force is vesting unlocks: the Foundation allocation (9.26% of supply, about 66.67M AVAX) vests on a quarterly schedule of 1.67M AVAX per cliff, and the next cliff lands Aug 10 2026, inside this window.

The other two sell rows are zero. Sell #3 — Foundation and unscheduled unlocks — is zero as discretionary market flow: the quarterly Foundation cliff is already counted above and unlocks into custody, and no discretionary Foundation sale was observed on-chain in the window. Sell #4 — long-term locked or bankruptcy — is zero, because no bankruptcy estate or court-ordered distribution applies to AVAX. The one-quarter cliff and the continuous staking mint are the whole of Avalanche's new supply.

Buy pressure: where new AVAX goes

The buy side is thin. Buy #1 — programmatic buyback — is zero: Avalanche runs no buyback, because validator income comes from newly minted rewards plus burned fees, not from a treasury buying AVAX on the market. Buy #2 — protocol fee burn — is real but small at about 0.11M AVAX over 90 days. Every C-Chain base fee, and the priority fee too, is permanently burned under Avalanche's EIP-1559-style dynamic fee, but the ACP-125 upgrade cut the minimum base fee from 25 nAVAX to 1 nAVAX, so at current activity the network burns only about 1,000 to 1,300 AVAX a day — far below the ~3.4M staking mint (cumulative lifetime burn is about 5.4M AVAX). Buy #3, a Foundation buy, is zero — there is no open-market buying of AVAX — and Buy #4, a new long-term lock, is zero, because AVAX staking locks are structural to consensus, not a new lockup event created in the window.

Foundation and overhang

The team-controlled overhang is the Avalanche Foundation. Its allocation is about 66.67M AVAX (9.26% of supply), of which roughly 38.34M is unlocked and about 28.34M remains on the quarterly vesting schedule that releases 1.67M per cliff. Separately, about 31.67M AVAX is minted but not yet circulating — the gap between the ~463.4M total minted and the ~431.8M circulating — held across staking and reserve buckets. The Foundation's cliffs unlock into custody for ecosystem use rather than straight onto the market, which is why the discretionary Sell #3 row is carried at zero. The trigger is simple: if the Foundation's balance falls between refreshes — an on-chain outflow beyond the scheduled cliff — that outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh.

How AVAX compares to other capped proof-of-stake chains

AVAX sits between two structural classes. Like Bitcoin, it has a hard cap — 720M — so its issuance is bounded and, unlike an uncapped chain such as Ethereum or Solana, AVAX can never mint beyond that ceiling. But unlike Bitcoin's fixed halving schedule, Avalanche's issuance is a staking-reward curve: new AVAX is minted continuously to validators toward the cap, so at ~463.4M minted of 720M there is still years of issuance ahead. That makes AVAX capped but still meaningfully inflationary today, closer to a mid-life proof-of-stake chain than to a near-terminal-issuance asset.

The comparison that matters most is the fee burn. Avalanche and Ethereum both burn base fees under an EIP-1559 design — and Avalanche burns the priority fee too — so both chains can, in principle, offset issuance with burn during high activity. Ethereum has periodically burned enough to go net deflationary; Avalanche did so during 2025 activity spikes. But after the ACP-125 base-fee cut, AVAX's burn at current volume is a rounding error against the staking mint, so the offset that makes the mechanism interesting is dormant. AVAX is therefore a capped chain whose burn is real but currently too small to cancel issuance — the mint sets the direction until either activity (and burn) rises sharply or issuance decays further toward the cap.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Watch the C-Chain burn rate — it is the only force that can offset the mint, and a sustained rise in network activity (the kind that briefly turned AVAX deflationary in 2025) would close the gap fast. Keep the Aug 10 2026 Foundation vesting cliff on the calendar — 1.67M AVAX into custody — and watch whether any of it moves on-chain toward exchanges, which would push the Sell #3 row above zero. Watch the staking ratio: if more AVAX is staked, the effective network issuance rises; if stakers unstake, it falls. And watch for any ACP governance proposal that changes the base-fee floor or the staking-reward curve, either of which would reset the mint-versus-burn balance directly.

Summary

Avalanche's AVAX is a hard-capped (720M) proof-of-stake token whose supply is still growing: about 5.07M AVAX over 90 days from a 3.4M staking mint plus a 1.67M quarterly Foundation cliff, against only about 0.11M of fee burn — net roughly +1.15%. The defining mechanism is that all validator income is newly minted while fees are burned, and after the ACP-125 base-fee cut the burn is now far too small to cancel the mint. Our monitor reads +0.031%, essentially flat, because its circulating base does not capture the staked, non-float mint or the custody cliff — a structural classification gap, not a data error. The key point is that AVAX is capped but not yet near terminal issuance: until burn rises with activity or issuance decays toward the cap, the staking mint keeps supply growing.