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

Kaspa (KAS) is mildly inflationary, and the rate falls a little every month. Proof-of-work miners received 180.0M KAS of new coins in the last 90 days, and nothing was burned or bought back, so supply grew +0.65%. The Kaspa block reward is cut by about 5.6% each month, so the next 90 days should add about 151.7M KAS, or +0.55%. The monitor reads +0.84%, a gap of 0.20pp, inside our tolerance.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days to Oct 4 2026, KAS supply grew +0.65%: 180.0M KAS of new mining rewards against 27.74B KAS in circulation, with zero on the buy side. The next 90 days project +0.55%, lower because three monthly reward cuts land inside that window. The monitor measures +0.84% over its own 90 days, so the gap is +0.20pp, well under the 0.5pp line, and no warning chip is shown. Kaspa is a shrinking-emission proof-of-work chain: every new coin goes to miners, and the flow of new coins halves every year in twelve small monthly steps.

Sell pressure: where new KAS comes from

Protocol inflation is the whole Kaspa sell side: 179.99M KAS in 90 days, about 2.0M KAS a day. Kaspa makes ten blocks every second, and each block pays its miner a fixed subsidy taken from a table built into the node software. At the start of the window the reward was 2.45 KAS per block; it fell to 2.31 KAS on Aug 5 2026 and to 2.18 KASon Sep 4 2026. We added the reward up block by block over the window and checked it against the network's own supply count at six dates since Jun 16 2026: the two agree to within 0.001%. Miners sell part of these coins to pay for power and machines, which is why this is counted as sell pressure.

Vesting unlocks are zero. Kaspa launched in November 2021 as a fair launch: no premine, no coin sale, no team, investor or foundation allocation. There is no unlock calendar because nothing was ever set aside to unlock. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are also zero: the only group wallets are community donation funds, none of them paid out in the window, and they already count as circulating. Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply is zero too, with no estate, trustee or exchange failure holding KAS for later release.

Buy pressure: where new KAS goes

Nothing in Kaspa takes coins out of the market. There is no programmatic buyback (zero), because the network earns no revenue of its own. There is no protocol fee burn (zero): every transaction fee goes to the miner who includes it. The Toccata upgrade on Jun 30 2026 added covenants and zero-knowledge tools and raised the minimum fee, but it still burns nothing. Some users send coins to an address no one can spend; it took in 1,519 KAS this window, too small to matter and not a protocol rule, so we do not count it.

Foundation buying is zero, since no treasury buys KAS on the market. New long-term locks are zeroas well: Kaspa is proof-of-work, so there is no staking contract to pull coins out of circulation. The result is a buy side of zero, which makes Kaspa's net supply change equal to its mining issuance.

Foundation and overhang

Kaspa has no company treasury and no unminted reserve controlled by a team. The tracked group wallets are community donation funds. The DAGKnight fund holds 70.25M KAS and the Rust fund 46.16M KAS; neither moved coins out between Jul 6 and Oct 4 2026. The dev fund holds 1.19M KAS and only received small gifts, and the mining dev fund holds about 0.22M KAS. Together that is about 117.8M KAS, or 0.42% of circulating supply.

All of these coins are already inside the circulating count, so if a fund pays developers who then sell, the coins change hands without any new supply appearing. We read every fund balance on chain at each rebuild. If one of these balances falls between our checks, we look at where the coins went and record the outflow in the Foundation row at the next check.

How KAS compares to other proof-of-work chains

Kaspa and Bitcoin share the same basic promise: a hard cap and a reward that halves over time. Kaspa's cap is about 28.70B KAS, and 96.6% of it is already mined, leaving about 966M KAS for all future miners. The difference is the shape. Bitcoin halves its reward in one step every four years, so its new supply drops sharply on a single day. Kaspa halves its reward every year, spread over twelve monthly cuts of about 5.6% each, so the KAS supply curve bends smoothly with no single halving shock.

Because Kaspa halves every year rather than every four, its inflation falls much faster than Bitcoin's did at the same age. At today's reward Kaspa adds about 483M KASover the next 365 days, about 1.7% of circulating supply, and the year after that roughly half as much. Proof-of-work chains that copied Bitcoin's four-year halving, such as Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, step down far more slowly.

Kaspa also differs from chains with a permanent tail emission, such as Monero, which keep a small fixed reward forever so miners are always paid. Kaspa's reward table keeps shrinking until it runs out around 2057, after which miners would live on fees alone. And unlike most proof-of-stake Layer 1s, Kaspa has no fee burn and no staking lock, so its net supply change is simply the mining reward, with nothing on the other side of the ledger.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Oct 5 2026: the monthly reward cut takes the Kaspa block subsidy from 2.18 to 2.06 KAS per block, about 1.78M KAS a day.

Nov 4 2026: the next cut takes the subsidy to 1.94 KAS per block, and Dec 5 2026 brings it to 1.84 KAS per block, which together give the 151.7M KAS forward figure.

Any block-rate change: when Kaspa moved from one to ten blocks per second in May 2025, the reward table split the same per-second emission across ten times as many blocks. No new block-rate upgrade is scheduled; if one is, we will check that its release keeps the same rule, so a faster chain does not change supply.

The donation funds: any outflow from the DAGKnight fund (70.25M KAS) or the Rust fund (46.16M KAS) would be the first sign of a group-controlled sale. Neither has moved in this window.

Summary

Kaspa (KAS) is a capped proof-of-work coin whose only new supply is the mining reward: about 180.0M KAS, or +0.65%, in the last 90 days, and about 151.7M KAS, or +0.55%, in the next 90. Nothing is burned, bought back or locked, so the buy side is zero, and there are no vesting unlocks because Kaspa had no premine. The main risk is that miners keep selling into a market where little else absorbs the coins. The ceiling is firm: 96.6% of the 28.70B KAS cap is already mined, and the reward halves again every year.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of KAS, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 4 2026.