What is the Kite (KITE) inflation rate?

+96.85% a year, and +47.21% in the next 90 days. That is new KITE minus what is burned or bought back, checked Oct 9 2026.

Is KITE inflationary or deflationary?

Inflationary: KITE's supply is growing, about +96.85% a year.

Where does new KITE supply come from?

The ecosystem pool unlocks 65.22M KITE a month, and an 800M team and investor unlock opens on Nov 3 2026.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework · Inflation Analysis

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

KITE supply is growing, and the next 90 days are the heaviest since launch. No new KITE is minted, but the coins locked at launch open on a calendar: the Kite ecosystem pool released 195.6M KITE in the last 90 days, a net rise of +8.18% on 2.39B circulating. The next 90 days add about 1.13B KITE, or +47.2%, because the first team and investor unlock of 800M lands on Nov 3 2026. Nothing is burned or bought back, and the total stays capped at 10 billion.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days to Oct 9 2026, KITE supply grew a net +8.18%: 195.6M KITE of scheduled ecosystem unlocks against no burn and no buyback. The inflation monitor reads −0.06%, a gap of 8.24 percentage points, so a ⚠ monitor gap note ships with the numbers. The reason is dated: the circulating count the monitor reads last moved on Jul 1 2026, to 2.39B KITE, and has not added the Aug 1, Sep 1 and Oct 1 2026 ecosystem releases. Our on-chain reading stays. Looking forward, the projection jumps to +47.2% for the next 90 days. Kite is a young token in its unlock phase: inflationary by calendar, with the largest single unlock of its first year still ahead.

Sell pressure: where new KITE comes from

Protocol inflation is 0. Every one of the 10 billion KITE was created at launch on Ethereum and moves between Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche and HyperEVM through a bridge that burns on one side and mints on the other. Read on all four chains on Oct 9 2026, the total adds up to exactly 10,000,000,000 KITE. On the Kite chain, validators have 12.0M KITE staked, and the 50,000-KITE reward pot that pays them has paid nothing since it was filled in February 2026, so staking created no new supply either.

Vesting unlocks are the whole story: 195.6M KITE in the last 90 days. The Ecosystem and Community pool (48% of supply, 4.8B KITE) opened 37.5% at launch and releases 65.22M KITE on the 1st of every month until Nov 2029. Aug 1, Sep 1 and Oct 1 2026 fell inside the window. For the next 90 days the calendar holds three more ecosystem releases (195.6M), then the first team and investor unlock on Nov 3 2026, one year after the token launched: 500M for the team and 300M for investors, a quarter of each share. After that the two shares release 66.67M KITE a month, on Dec 3 2026 and Jan 3 2027 inside this window, and then every month until Nov 2029. Altogether that is 1.13B KITE in the next 90 days. One public tracker shows a smaller cliff of 640M; Kite's own filing describes a one-year cliff with a four-year unlock, which reads as a quarter at the cliff, so we use 800M. The Modules share (20%, 2B KITE) has no schedule we could confirm from two sources, and its wallets did not move, so it is booked at 0 and watched.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are 0. Four Foundation ecosystem wallets did pay out 121.45M KITE between Jul 13 and Aug 5 2026, then stopped when the token was paused after an attack on Aug 6. Those coins had already been counted as circulating when they unlocked, so counting them again would double-count. Long-term locks and bankruptcy are 0: no estate or court-run lock holds KITE, and the coins frozen in the attack were swapped one-for-one into the new token contract.

Buy pressure: where new KITE goes

Programmatic buyback is 0. Kite's design says a small commission on every AI-service payment will be swapped into KITE on the open market, but no buyback contract, wallet or purchase exists yet. Protocol fee burn is 0. Gas on the Kite chain is paid in stablecoins rather than KITE, and nothing is destroyed: the burn addresses hold no KITE, and the cross-chain total did not fall.

Foundation buy is 0 — no purchase was announced or seen on-chain. New long-term lock is 0. The 12.0M KITE staked on the Kite chain has not changed since March 2026, and staked coins still count as circulating. Module owners are meant to lock KITE in permanent liquidity pools when their modules go live; none of those locks has started. Until the fee swap or the module locks begin, KITE has no buyer built into the protocol.

Foundation and overhang

The Kite Foundation controls almost all of the supply that is not yet circulating, in multisig wallets on Ethereum linked by shared signers. Together they hold 8.59B KITE. The four ecosystem payout wallets hold 3.03B; a single wallet holds exactly 1.20B, the investor share, and did not move in these 90 days; two clusters of about 1.99B and 1.97B match the team and Modules shares (the chain does not label which is which) and were flat through the window; a 227M airdrop wallet and a 168M wallet complete the list.

These wallets hold about 977M KITE more than the coins still counted as locked, so part of what they hold is already unlocked and can be sold at any time. We track every one of them. If any of these balances falls between checks, the outflow enters the Foundation row at the next check.

How KITE compares to other new-launch Layer 1s

KITE sits in the group of young Layer 1 tokens that launched with under a quarter of their supply trading and a large team and investor share behind a one-year cliff. The mechanism that matters for this group is the cliff, not block rewards. Many older proof-of-stake chains create new coins every block to pay stakers, which gives a steady single-digit yearly inflation. KITE creates none: its supply growth is the calendar handing out coins that already exist, which is slower month to month but arrives in large steps.

Against chains with a fee burn, KITE also lacks an offset. A chain that burns part of every fee in its own token can cancel some unlocks when usage is high. Kite charges fees in stablecoins, so usage does not shrink KITE supply; the only planned offset is the fee-to-KITE swap, which has not started. Compared with tokens whose large holders keep coins in time-lock contracts, KITE's unlocked coins sit in ordinary Foundation multisigs, so release depends on the Foundation's choices rather than on code.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Nov 3 2026: the first team and investor unlock of 800M KITE, a third of today's circulating supply. Watch whether the 1.20B investor wallet and the team wallets start sending coins out.

Nov 1 2026, Dec 1 2026 and Jan 1 2027: the monthly 65.22M KITE ecosystem releases, and whether the four Foundation payout wallets restart the payouts that stopped on Aug 5 2026.

Dec 3 2026 and Jan 3 2027: the first two monthly team and investor releases of 66.67M KITE each.

The fee swap and module locks: any start of the commission-to-KITE swap or of permanent module liquidity locks would add the first real buy-side row.

Summary

KITE (Kite) grew its circulating supply +8.18% in the 90 days to Oct 9 2026, all from scheduled ecosystem unlocks of 195.6M KITE, with no minting, no burn and no buyback. The next 90 days are projected at +47.2%, about 1.13B KITE, led by the 800M team and investor unlock on Nov 3 2026. The key risk is that unlock and the 8.59B KITE the Foundation still holds in multisig wallets. The ceiling is the fixed 10 billion total, which every chain together still matches exactly.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of KITE, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 9 2026.