SOL Inflation Analysis · July 2026 · Supply growing, projected to keep growing
Solana mints new SOL for stakers at about 3.72% a year — roughly 5.44M SOL reaching the float this window — and locked stake from the bankruptcy estate released another 2.48M SOL. Against that, only a 0.065M SOL base-fee burn. The framework reads +1.35% net for the 90-day window against the inflation monitor's +1.17%. The Solana mint rate keeps falling, but the next 90 days are heavier, not lighter: 5.33M SOL of stake lockups expire, including two August cliffs.
The verdict, in one paragraph
For the 90-day window ending Jul 27 2026, the MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads SOL at +1.35% net on a circulating base of 583.1M SOL — 7.92M SOL of sell pressure against 0.065M SOL of buy pressure. The independent inflation monitor reads +1.17% over the same window, a gap of 0.18 percentage points, comfortably inside the 0.5pp tolerance, so no data-conflict chip is raised. Forward, the framework projects +1.81% for the next 90 days: the Solana emission curve steps down, but a much larger block of locked stake expires. Solana is inflationary by design on a falling curve, with a lumpy unlock calendar bolted on — supply is growing and projected to grow faster next quarter, for reasons that have nothing to do with the protocol.
Sell pressure: where new SOL comes from
Sell #1, protocol inflation, is the steady half of Solana's supply growth. Solana is a delegated proof-of-stake Layer 1 that mints new SOL every epoch and pays it entirely to validators and delegators — the foundation share of issuance is zero. The annual rate read directly from the Solana chain is 3.72%, sitting exactly on the as-launched disinflation curve that began at 8% and tapers about 15% a year toward a 1.5% terminal floor. Against Solana's 631.1M SOL total supply that is a gross mint of roughly 5.87M SOL a quarter, but issuance is paid pro-rata to stake and the share landing in locked, non-circulating stake accounts stays locked. Sized on the float, Sell #1 is 5.44M SOL for the window just ended and 5.28M SOL projected for the next one — the curve doing its work, quietly, quarter after quarter.
Sell #2, vesting unlocks, is where this rebuild changes the picture. Solana's original team, seed and validator allocations vested out years ago; the one live vesting stream is the bankruptcy-estate locked stake — originally the Alameda and FTX allocations, largely auctioned to institutional buyers who inherited the original lockups. Reading the lockup timestamp on every one of the 3,336 non-circulating Solana accounts shows two things an unlock tracker does not. First, the recurring monthly stream is bigger than commonly quoted: about 831K SOL a month, firing on the 7th and the 11th, which puts 2.48M SOL into the window just ended. Second, the next 90 days are not a continuation of that run rate. A cliff of 1.38M SOL expires on Aug 1 2026 and another 875K SOL on Aug 30 2026, taking the forward total to 5.33M SOL — more than double the trailing figure and, for one quarter, roughly the size of the protocol mint itself. Because a Solana stake lockup expiring moves the coins out of the non-circulating bucket automatically, scheduled and realised are the same number here: not one SOL whose lockup expired inside the last 90 days is still sitting in the non-circulating list.
The other two sell rows are booked zero. Sell #3, Foundation and unscheduled unlocks, is zero: 26.14M SOLsits outside the float carrying no lockup at all — Solana Foundation and reserve accounts held back by classification rather than by code — but no discretionary release was observed in the window and no calendar is published. Sell #4, long-term locked or bankruptcy, is zero by classification rather than by absence: the bankruptcy estate's SOL is exactly the vesting calendar already carried in Sell #2, and booking it twice would double-count the same coins.
Buy pressure: where new SOL goes
Solana's only structural buy-side mechanism is the fee burn, and the split is what limits it. A Solana base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature, split 50/50: half burned, half to the block leader. Priority fees go 100% to the leader and are not burned at all — that changed with SIMD-0096, live since Feb 12 2025 — and out-of-protocol validator tips never touch the burn either. So the burnable slice is half of base fees only. At the current pace of about 719 SOL a day, Buy #2 is 0.065M SOL over 90 days: real, permanent, and roughly one percent of the issuance it offsets. Buy #1, programmatic buyback, is zero — Solana staking rewards are minted fresh, never bought on the market. Buy #3, Foundation buy, is zero, with no open-market accumulation programme disclosed. Buy #4, new long-term lock, is zero as a programmatic line: about two-thirds of SOL supply is staked, but Solana staking is holder-driven yield seeking with an epoch-length exit, not an announced lock with a fixed quantum.
Foundation and overhang
Three team-controlled or identified overhangs are tracked for SOL, and together they are the whole 48.03M SOL non-circulating pool. The first is the bankruptcy-estate locked stake: 21.89M SOL still carries a future lockup, on a dated calendar running through early 2028, already booked in Sell #2. The second is the Solana Foundation and reserve accounts: 26.14M SOL with no lockup on it at all — nothing on-chain stops it moving, only policy — and no published release calendar. The third is the aggregate non-circulating balance itself, read from a public node each rebuild, which is the tripwire for anything the first two miss. If any of these balances falls between refreshes faster than the published schedule explains, the outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh.
How SOL compares to other uncapped Layer 1 chains
Solana belongs to the continuous-emission, uncapped Layer 1 family, and the sharpest mechanism contrast is with Ethereum. Both mint for stakers; both burn fees. But Ethereum burns the entire base fee, which at busy times has pushed its net issuance to zero or below, while Solana burns only half of a base fee deliberately kept near-free — so essentially all Solana issuance reaches the float. That is a design choice, not a flaw: Solana optimises for cheap blockspace, which means the burn can never be a meaningful supply sink at current fee levels. Against a capped, halving chain such as Bitcoin, the difference is shape: a halving chain steps down in discrete jumps toward a hard cap, whereas Solana glides down a percentage-of-supply curve toward a permanent 1.5% floor that never reaches zero.
The second differentiator is one most uncapped Layer 1s do not carry: an exogenous vesting overhang from a bankruptcy estate. Next quarter, half of SOL's sell pressure comes not from the Solana protocol at all but from a court-derived release calendar that keeps firing into 2028. That is a knowable, dated, finite stream — unlike protocol issuance it has an end date — but it is also lumpy, and it is invisible to any comparison that looks only at the staking rate. On the emission curve alone SOL would read under 1% a quarter; with the unlock calendar it reads +1.81%.
What to watch in the next 90 days
The two August cliffs are the single most predictable supply events on the Solana calendar: 1.38M SOL on Aug 1 2026 and 875K SOL on Aug 30 2026, on top of the recurring 831K SOL tranches dated Aug 7 2026, Sep 7 2026 and Oct 7 2026. Watch SIMD-0550, which would double the disinflation taper from 15% to 30% a year and pull the terminal 1.5% floor forward to roughly 2029; it remains a proposal with no filed governance vote and no activated feature gate, and if it passes every future Sell #1 figure resets sharply lower. Watch SIMD-0553, the resource-based fee-burn proposal that would lift the Solana burn from about 719 SOL a day toward 7,500–9,000 — the only realistic path to a burn that matters. Watch Solana's on-chain governance, live since Jul 2 2026, which is the machinery both proposals now have to pass through. And watch the 26.14M SOL unlocked Foundation and reserve balance for any release, which would lift Sell #3 off zero.
Summary
Solana is inflationary from two directions at once, and only one of them is the protocol. Staking issuance of 5.44M SOL at about 3.72% a year plus 2.48M SOL of bankruptcy-estate vesting, against a 0.065M SOL base-fee burn, gives a framework reading of +1.35% net for the window against the monitor's +1.17% — a 0.18pp gap, well inside tolerance. Forward the framework reads +1.81%, because 5.33M SOL of stake lockups expire in the next 90 days against a mint that has fallen to 5.28M SOL. The key risk is that the unlock calendar fires on dates, not on price. The key relief is that the mint rate is contractually falling toward a 1.5% floor and the unlock calendar ends in 2028 — SOL has no supply cap, but its largest non-protocol supply stream does have an expiry date.
MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of Solana (SOL), Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Updated July 27 2026.