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

PENDLE supply is growing even though no new PENDLE has been minted since March 2025. In the 90 days to Oct 8 2026, 2.45M PENDLE moved from wallets that do not count as circulating into the market: pool rewards and team payments from the Pendle treasury, plus 881K PENDLE from old vote-locks that ran out. Nothing was removed, so the net change is +1.41%, and the lock dates point to about +1.86% in the next 90 days. The monitor reads +1.36%, so the two readings agree.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the last 90 days PENDLE's circulating supply grew by a net +1.41%: 2.45M PENDLE came onto the market against a circulating base of 173.74M, and no buy-side flow took coins back out. The monitor's 90-day reading is +1.36%, a gap of only 0.05 percentage points, well inside the 0.5-point line, so no warning chip is shown. For the next 90 days we project +1.86%, higher because more old vote-locks end in late December. The label we would give PENDLE today: no new minting, but a steady release of already-minted coins.

Sell pressure: where new PENDLE comes from

The PENDLE token contract can mint weekly reward emissions, but those emissions are only created when the incentives wallet claims them, and that last happened on Mar 24 2025, when 23.08M PENDLE was minted in one go and moved to the governance treasury. Total supply has stayed at 281.53M PENDLE since then. So all the selling pressure in this window comes from coins that already existed but sat outside the circulating count.

Protocol inflation: 900K PENDLE. Pendle pays its liquidity-pool rewards out of the governance treasury. It sent 400,000 PENDLE on Jul 20 2026 and 500,000 on Sep 13 2026 to the wallet that tops up the reward pools. Since the switch to an algorithmic reward model in January 2026, Pendle has cut its reward emissions sharply, and this pace has been steady for six months, so we keep the same 900K for the next 90 days.

Vesting unlocks: 0. The team, investor, advisor and ecosystem allocations finished vesting long ago, and unlock trackers list PENDLE as fully unlocked. No cliff falls in the window.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks: 670K PENDLE. The governance treasury sent 600,000 PENDLE to an exchange on Sep 8 2026, the same kind of transfer it made on May 13 2026. The team wallet paid out 70,000 PENDLE on Aug 26 2026; it pays roughly every two months, so we expect two more payments of about the same size before early January, about 140K PENDLE in the next 90 days. The exchange transfers come about every four months, which puts the next one just after our window, so we book none forward.

Long-term locks: 881K PENDLE. The old vePENDLE vote-lock was replaced in January 2026 by sPENDLE, a liquid staking token with a 14-day exit. The old lock no longer earns anything new, so it only shrinks: 881,032 PENDLE left it in this window as locks ended. Each lock has a fixed end date written on-chain, and those dates show 2.19M PENDLE ending in the next 90 days, with 645K on Dec 24 2026 and 1.13M on Dec 31 2026. That is the main reason the forward reading is higher than the last one.

Buy pressure: where new PENDLE goes

Programmatic buyback: 0 removed, 825K bought.Up to 80% of Pendle's fees fund a buyback that buys PENDLE on the open market every two weeks. In this window it bought 825,498 PENDLE and handed 808,964 of them to the sPENDLE staking contract, with 16,534 still waiting. That is real buying. But the bought coins are paid out to stakers, and staked PENDLE still counts as circulating, so the buyback moves coins from sellers to stakers without taking any off the market. It books zero here.

Protocol fee burn: 0. Burning is switched off in the PENDLE token contract, total supply did not fall, and the dead address holds the same 0.1 PENDLE it held at the start.

Foundation buy: 0. No Pendle treasury or team wallet bought PENDLE. Every one of their balances fell or stayed flat.

New long-term lock: 0. sPENDLE has a 14-day exit, about 31.35M PENDLE is staked, and that stake counts as circulating, so it is not a lock. The old vote-lock takes in nothing new.

Foundation and overhang

Pendle's non-circulating PENDLE sits in four places we read on-chain. The old vePENDLE vote-lock holds 63.54M PENDLE, and all of it is due to come out by early 2028 as the locks end. The governance treasury holds 19.75M; it pays the pool rewards and sends to exchanges from time to time. The ecosystem fund holds 16.12M and has not paid out since Apr 30 2026. The team wallet holds 7.77M and pays about every two months. Together these four come to about 107.18M PENDLE, close to the whole amount counted as non-circulating.

There is one more overhang that is easy to miss: about 9.55M PENDLE of weekly reward emissions has built up inside the token contract without being minted. The incentives wallet can claim it at any time, and it would land in the treasury first, so it would only count once the treasury sends it on. We read these balances on-chain at every rebuild. If any of these balances falls between rebuilds, the outflow enters the foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next rebuild.

How PENDLE compares to other DeFi revenue tokens

Many DeFi tokens now use fees to buy their own coin. What matters for supply is where the bought coins end up. A protocol that burns them, or parks them in a treasury that is not counted as circulating, takes them off the market and can shrink supply. Pendle hands its buyback to stakers, who can sell, so PENDLE's buyback works more like a dividend paid in PENDLE than a supply cut. That is why PENDLE shows 825K PENDLE bought and zero removed.

On rewards, PENDLE also differs from tokens that mint new coins every block for liquidity pools. Pendle pays pool rewards out of coins minted earlier, so total supply has been flat for over 18 months, but the circulating count still rises as the treasury spends. And unlike vote-escrow tokens whose lock still takes in new coins, Pendle retired its multi-year lock, so the lock now works in one direction only: out.

The result is a token with no new minting, a real but supply-neutral buyback, and a known release calendar from the old lock. That makes PENDLE's supply easier to forecast than most DeFi tokens, and the forecast for the coming months points up.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Dec 24 2026 and Dec 31 2026: the two largest vote-lock end dates in the window, 645K and 1.13M PENDLE. Holders may withdraw later than the end date, so part of this can slip into January.

About Oct 26 2026 and Dec 26 2026: the next likely team-wallet payments, about 70K PENDLE each if the two-month pattern holds.

The governance treasury: another reward top-up or exchange transfer of 0.4M to 0.6M PENDLE would add to the count. A claim of the 9.55M PENDLE of unminted emissions would raise total supply, though it would sit in the treasury first.

The buyback: it runs every two weeks. If Pendle ever switched to burning the bought coins, or keeping them out of circulation, the buy side would start to count and the reading could turn flat or negative.

Summary

PENDLE supply is growing about 1.41% per 90 days with no new minting at all: the Pendle treasury pays pool rewards and team costs from coins minted earlier, and the retired vePENDLE vote-lock releases coins as locks end. The fee buyback is real, 825K PENDLE in 90 days, but it pays stakers and removes nothing. With 2.19M PENDLE of locks ending by early January, we project about +1.86% for the next 90 days. The biggest risks to that reading are larger treasury transfers and a claim of the 9.55M PENDLE of unminted emissions.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of PENDLE, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 8 2026.