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

PENDLE supply is growing, and it is expected to keep growing. Between Jul 30 and Oct 28 2026 not one new PENDLE was minted, yet 2.09M PENDLEjoined the market from Pendle's treasury wallets and from old vePENDLE vote-locks that ended, against 0 removed. That is +1.20% in 90 days and about +1.64% in the next 90, with other supply trackers at +1.42%. PENDLE has no hard cap and no burn: the fee buyback pays stakers instead of shrinking the count.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days to Oct 28 2026, PENDLE circulating supply rose +1.20%, from coins that left Pendle-held wallets and ended vote-locks, while nothing on the buy side took PENDLE out of the market. Other supply trackers put the same 90 days at +1.42%, a gap of 0.22 points, so the two readings agree and the coin page carries no warning note. The next 90 days look heavier, about +1.64%, because large blocks of vePENDLE locks end on Dec 24 and Dec 31 2026. Pendle is a treasury-fed, no-mint, buyback-to-stakers token: the supply count grows only as Pendle and old lockers let coins out.

Sell pressure: where new PENDLE comes from

Protocol inflation, the first sell row, booked 500,000 PENDLE. The PENDLE token can mint weekly emissions, but nobody has claimed them since Mar 24 2025, and total supply stayed at 281.53M through the whole window. Pool rewards are instead paid from coins Pendle already holds: on Sep 13 2026 the governance multisig sent 500,000 PENDLE to the wallet that funds reward payouts, and that wallet is topped up every month or two, so the next 90 days carry about the same amount.

Vesting unlocks are 0. Team, investor and advisor PENDLE finished vesting by September 2024, and no scheduled unlock is left anywhere in the token's plan.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks came to 705,000 PENDLE. The governance multisig sent 600,000 PENDLE to an exchange through a pass-through wallet on Sep 8 2026, and the team multisig paid 70,000 on Aug 26 and 35,000 on Oct 26 2026. Exchange sends from the treasury have come every few months with no published plan, so the next 90 days count only the regular team payouts, about 105,000 PENDLE.

Long-term locks released 883,099 PENDLE. vePENDLE, the old vote-lock, stopped taking new locks on Jan 29 2026 when sPENDLE replaced it, so it only shrinks now: every week some locks end and their owners can take the PENDLE out. On the lock's own schedule another 2.24M PENDLE ends in the next 90 days, with 205,008 on Nov 12, 644,616 on Dec 24 and 1.13M on Dec 31 2026. That is the main reason the next 90 days run higher than the last.

Buy pressure: where new PENDLE goes

The programmatic buyback is large but books 0. Pendle spends 80% of its V2 yield and swap fees on PENDLE, buying every hour on the open market, and in these 90 days that bought 815,387 PENDLE. Every two weeks the bought PENDLE goes into the sPENDLE staking contract and is paid to active stakers. Staked PENDLE still counts as circulating and can be withdrawn after 14 days, so the PENDLE buyback moves coins from sellers to stakers without taking any off the market.

The protocol fee burn is 0. Burning is switched off inside the PENDLE token itself, and total supply did not fall by a single coin in the window.

Foundation buying is 0. None of the three Pendle multisigs received any PENDLE in these 90 days; the treasury only sends coins out.

New long-term locks are 0. vePENDLE took in nothing, and sPENDLE staking, which replaced it, counts as circulating, so the roughly 30.32M PENDLE in the staking contract removes nothing from the count.

Foundation and overhang

Pendle holds a large stock of PENDLE outside the market. The governance multisig holds 19.75M PENDLE and funds both rewards and the occasional exchange send. The ecosystem fund holds 16.12M PENDLE and has not moved since Apr 30 2026. The team multisig holds 7.73M PENDLE and pays out a small amount about every two months. Together these three Pendle wallets hold about 43.6M PENDLE, a quarter of everything now circulating.

Two more piles sit outside the count. The vePENDLE vote-lock still holds 63.42M PENDLE, about 1.92M of it already free to withdraw, and its biggest blocks end on Jan 20 2028 (32.18M) and Mar 2 2028 (12.76M). The token can also still mint about 10.06M PENDLEof unclaimed weekly emissions to Pendle's incentives wallet in one go. We check every one of these balances at each refresh, and if any Pendle wallet's balance falls between refreshes, the outflow is added to the sell side at the next refresh.

How PENDLE compares to other DeFi buyback tokens

Many DeFi tokens now buy themselves back with fees, but they differ in where the bought coins end up. Some burn them, which shrinks supply for good. Some park them in a treasury that is left out of the circulating count, which also takes them off the market until the treasury sells. Pendle does neither: the PENDLE buyback is paid to sPENDLE stakers, so it rewards holders and can calm selling, but it does not lower the PENDLE count.

On issuance, PENDLE is closer to a treasury-run token than to a minting one. Most liquidity-reward tokens mint a fixed amount every week; Pendle stopped claiming its mint in March 2025 and pays rewards out of coins it already holds, and its newer reward model has cut that spending sharply. The trade-off is that PENDLE supply growth depends on decisions by Pendle's own multisigs and on when old lockers withdraw, not on a fixed schedule, and a 10.06M PENDLE mint is still possible.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Nov 12 2026: 205,008 PENDLE of vePENDLE locks end and can be withdrawn.

Dec 24 and Dec 31 2026: 644,616 and 1.13M PENDLE of vePENDLE locks end, the two biggest lock endings in this 90-day stretch.

Late December 2026: the team multisig's next regular payout, which has run about every two months.

Any treasury send to an exchange, or any claim of the 10.06M PENDLE unminted emission, would push PENDLE supply growth well above this reading.

The size of the fortnightly buyback deliveries, which shrank from 199,338 PENDLE on Aug 14 to 92,088 on Oct 23 2026 as fees cooled.

Summary

PENDLE supply grew +1.20% in the 90 days to Oct 28 2026 and should grow about +1.64% in the next 90, close to the +1.42%other trackers show. No PENDLE is being minted; the growth comes from Pendle's treasury paying rewards and payouts and from old vePENDLE locks ending. The PENDLE fee buyback bought 815,387 PENDLE but pays it to stakers, so it does not shrink supply. The main risks are the 43.6M PENDLEin Pendle's own wallets, the 63.42M still in vote-locks and a 10.06M mint that has not been claimed, with no hard cap above any of them.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of PENDLE, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 28 2026.