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

The Graph (GRT) is inflationary: supply grew +1.04% in the 90 days from Jul 31 to Oct 29 2026, and we expect about +1.07% over the next 90 days. The network minted 75.15M GRTfor indexers and a Foundation fund, and the Graph Foundation's lock paid out 38.75M GRT, while query and curation taxes burned only 59,878 GRT. GRT has no supply cap, so new coins arrive with every Ethereum block for as long as governance keeps the current rate.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the last 90 days The Graph added 113.90M GRT to the market and removed 59,878 GRT, a net +1.04% on a circulating base of 10.94B GRT. For the next 90 days we expect 116.69M GRT of new supply against the same small burn, or about +1.07%. Other trackers show +1.31% for the same 90 days, which is 0.27 points higher than our figure; the difference is small, so the coin page carries no warning note. GRT is a work token that is inflationary by design: the people who run the network are paid in new coins, and almost nothing takes coins back out.

Sell pressure: where new GRT comes from

Protocol inflation is the biggest source. The Graph mints 120.73 GRT for every Ethereum block, about 866,000 GRT a day, and pays it out on Arbitrum, where the protocol now lives. In these 90 days that came to 75.15M GRT. Most of it went to indexers, the operators who store and serve blockchain data, and they share it with the delegators who back them.

Two changes in late summer moved where that money lands, not how much is made. Since Sep 1 2026, a fifth of the issuance, 24.146 GRT per block, goes straight to a Foundation fund for building and running the network. From late August 2026, indexers that miss the new service checks lose their rewards, and that share is set aside in a separate pot instead. Because the fund is now paid every block rather than when indexers claim, the minting runs close to the full rate, so we expect about 77.94M GRT in the next 90 days.

Vesting unlocks are the second source. The Graph Foundation's 10-year lock releases 12.92M GRT once a month until Dec 17 2030. It paid out on Aug 25, Sep 23 and Oct 26 2026, 38.75M GRT in all, and each payment moved on to other wallets within two days. Three more payments start on Nov 17 2026, Dec 17 2026 and Jan 17 2027, another 38.75M GRT.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks add nothing: the Foundation's other pots already count as circulating, so spending from them only moves coins that are already in the market. Long-term locked supply is also zero. There is no bankruptcy estate holding GRT, and the team, investor and Edge & Node schedules all finished by December 2025.

Buy pressure: where new GRT goes

There is no programmatic buyback. No contract or treasury buys GRT on the market. A holder asked on the forum on Sep 5 2026 for part of protocol revenue to buy and burn GRT, but no one has turned it into a vote.

The protocol fee burn is the only steady removal. One percent of every query payment is destroyed, and so is a small tax when people curate subgraphs. In these 90 days that burned 59,878 GRT, about 665 a day, because apps paid only around $58,000 for queries on the network. The burn cancels less than 0.1% of the new GRT.

A Foundation buy is zero: the Foundation receives GRT from its lock and from issuance and passes it on; we found no purchase in these 90 days. A new long-term lock is zero as well. About 1.84B GRT is staked by indexers and delegators, down from 2.10B GRT on Jul 31 2026, but staked GRT still counts as circulating, so staking takes nothing out of the count.

Foundation and overhang

The largest overhang is the Foundation lock itself, which still holds 645.83M GRT. It is on a fixed schedule, so we book each monthly payment in the vesting row as it comes due rather than all at once.

Three smaller Foundation-side balances sit inside the market already. The building fund created on Sep 1 2026 holds 2.79M GRT after paying out 6.96M. The pot of rewards withheld from indexers that failed the service checks holds 4.32M GRT and has not paid anything out. The two Foundation safes that receive the monthly unlock hold almost nothing between payments, because each payment is passed on within a day or two. We check all of these balances on-chain. If any of them falls between checks, the outflow goes into the Foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next check.

How GRT compares to other data and work-token networks

GRT sits in the group of tokens that pay operators to do work: serve data, store files or run jobs. Inside that group, The Graph is one of the plainer inflation designs. It mints a fixed amount per Ethereum block with no cap and no halving, and its only built-in removal is a 1% tax on query payments. As long as query spending stays small, new issuance outweighs the burn by more than a thousand to one.

Filecoin also pays its operators with newly minted coins, but it burns network fees and locks coins as collateral from storage providers, so more use pulls more coins out of the market. Render runs a burn-and-mint design in which users burn tokens to pay for work while operators receive new ones, so heavy use can offset emissions. Chainlink sits at the other end: it has a fixed cap of one billion LINK and no protocol issuance, and its supply grows only when the team releases coins from its reserve wallets.

Compared with these, GRT's supply depends far more on governance than on usage. The rate of new coins is set by a single protocol number, and the burn only matters if query payments grow many times over.

What to watch in the next 90 days

On Nov 17 2026 the Foundation lock reaches its next monthly payment of 12.92M GRT, followed by Dec 17 2026 and Jan 17 2027; a payment that is skipped or delayed past the window would lower our forecast.

The move of BSC and Polygon subgraphs from the free Studio onto the paid network was almost done on Oct 27 2026, with fewer than 78 of more than 860 left. If that lifts query payments, the burn grows with them.

GIP-0090, posted on Sep 23 2026, asks for 0.1% of issuance to fund a community group. It would come out of the same 120.73 GRT per block, so it would not change total supply.

Any proposal to cut the issuance rate, or to spend revenue on buying and burning GRT, would change this ledger more than anything else; none was up for a vote on Oct 29 2026. We also watch whether the 4.32M GRT of withheld rewards is sent out.

Summary

The Graph's GRT supply grew +1.04% in the 90 days to Oct 29 2026 and is projected to grow about +1.07%in the next 90 days. New coins come from issuance of 120.73 GRT per Ethereum block and from the Graph Foundation's monthly unlock of 12.92M GRT, which runs until Dec 17 2030. The only removal is a small tax burn on queries and curation, under 60,000 GRT in 90 days. GRT has no supply cap, so the main risk for holders is steady dilution of roughly 4% a year unless governance lowers issuance or query spending grows sharply.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of GRT, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 29 2026.