STX Inflation Analysis · August 2026 · Supply growing, projected to keep growing
Stacks added 13.72M STX to supply in the last 90 days and removed nothing. Two protocol mints run in parallel on the Stacks chain — a mining coinbase of 7.77M STX paid on every Bitcoin block, and a five-year endowment emission of 5.95M STX paid at each mining tenure — and both stepped up on the same day, Jul 30 2026, when the PoX-5 upgrade restored the coinbase to 1,000 STX per Bitcoin block and deleted the reduction schedule that had governed STX issuance. Stacks now has no halving path and no supply cap. That is +0.74% net over the last 90 days against +0.72% from our supply monitor, a gap of 0.02 percentage points and no ⚠ chip, rising to +1.21% projected as the new rates carry a full quarter for the first time.
The verdict, in one paragraph
For the 90-day window ending Aug 19 2026, the MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads STX at +0.74% net, with +1.21% projected over the next 90 days. Our supply monitor reads +0.72% for the same trailing window, a gap of 0.02 percentage points — comfortably inside the framework's half-point tolerance, so no ⚠ monitor gap chip is attached to the STX overview page. That agreement is expected rather than confirming: on a chain whose only ledger movement is issuance, the monitor and the framework are reading the same underlying quantity from two directions. The work that matters here is the split between the two Stacks mints and the demonstration that every other row is genuinely zero. Stacks is an uncapped Bitcoin layer that has just removed its own brake: the coinbase reduction schedule is gone, the endowment emission steps up again in 2027, and nothing on the buy side offsets either.
Sell pressure: where new STX comes from
Sell #1 — protocol inflation — is the mining coinbase, at 7.77M STX in the last 90 days and 12.72M STX projected. Stacks uses Proof of Transfer: miners spend bitcoin, a sortition on each Bitcoin block picks the tenure winner, and the winner receives freshly minted STX. SIP-029 cut that coinbase from 1,000 STX to 500 STX per Bitcoin block in Apr 2026. SIP-045, the PoX-5 Bitcoin Staking upgrade, activated at Bitcoin block 960,230 on Jul 30 2026 and restored the coinbase to 1,000 STX — and removed the SIP-029 reduction schedule outright, so the 1,000 STX rate carries no scheduled halving at all. Read at both ends of the window, the chain's own supply figure rose from 1,845,932,657 STX to 1,859,653,168 STX, and that measured rise confirms the documented rates to within half a percent in each segment.
Sell #5 — endowment emission — is the second mint, at 5.95M STX last 90 days and 9.74M STX projected. SIP-031 created a five-year Stacks Endowment funded by new issuance: roughly 500M STX over 60 months, minted at each PoX tenure start and deposited straight into the endowment address. The per-tenure rate stepped from 475 STX to 1,140 STX at Bitcoin block 960,300 — seventy Bitcoin blocks after the PoX-5 activation, the same day. The distinction between the two mints matters arithmetically: the coinbase is paid per Bitcoin block, but the endowment emission is paid per tenure, and only about 68 of every 100 Bitcoin blocks won a tenure after the upgrade. Applying a Bitcoin-block count to the endowment stream would overstate it by roughly a third.
Sell #2 — vesting unlocks — is zero. Every STX from the 2019 token offerings has been free for years; the chain reports its locked share at 100% unlocked at both ends of this window and at every earlier height checked, so no release calendar from that era survives to be read. The endowment's own separate 100M STX tranche does unlock a twenty-fourth of itself every 4,383 Bitcoin blocks, but that tranche was minted at SIP-031 activation in Jul 2025 and already sits inside the counted supply, and its terms place it privately with 12 to 36 month lockups rather than on the open market — booking it would double-count. Sell #4 — long-term locked or bankruptcy — is zero because no bankruptcy estate, trustee or court-administered pool holds STX.
Buy pressure: where new STX goes
All four buy rows are zero, and that is the defining fact about Stacks inflation. Buy #1 — programmatic buyback — is zero because Stacks operates no repurchase contract, no auction that retires STX and no programme that spends revenue on the token. Buy #2 — protocol fee burn — is zero because Stacks transaction fees are paid to miners rather than destroyed; what gets consumed in Proof of Transfer is the bitcoin miners commit, and PoX-5 now routes even that into the staking reward pool instead of burning it. STX supply itself has never fallen at any height sampled across this window, and no dead address holds STX.
Buy #3 — Foundation buy — is zero. The Stacks Endowment is funded by new issuance, and its own reporting describes capital being deployed outward — roughly $7.3M across DeFi liquidity and market making in the April-to-June quarter — rather than STX being bought on the open market. Buy #4 — new long-term lock — is zero, and this is the row most often misread on Stacks. Stacking locks STX for reward cycles of roughly two weeks, but it pays its yield in bitcoin, not STX, so it never bids for the token. The locked STX also stays inside the counted circulating figure and comes free at each cycle end, which makes stacking custody rather than a lock. It shrank in any case: 566.01M STX was stacked at the start of the window against 392.45M STX now, a net fall of 173.56M STX, partly because PoX-5 released every existing lock at activation. The next cycle currently shows 308.73M STX committed.
Foundation and overhang
Three endowment wallets carry the team-controlled overhang on Stacks. The SIP-031 primary mint address, the wallet the endowment emission accrues into, held 45.94M STX at the close of the window against 36.39M STX at its start. The endowment operating multisig, which spends against the approved annual budget, held 7.19M STX against 2.38M STX. A third, retired operating wallet is empty. Balance at both ends is never sufficient on its own, so the full send-and-receive log was read for each: 102.6M STX left the pair inside the window and 117.0M STX came back, leaving the cluster 14.37M STX richer than it started. The flow is large and real, but it round-trips through liquidity and market-making positions rather than draining to market, which is why Sell #3 books zero — sizing it from the gross outflow while ignoring the gross inflow would be arithmetically wrong.
The Stacks Endowment separately reported 112M STX of long-term treasury holdings at the end of Jun 2026, more than the three identified wallets show, so part of that position sits in addresses this session could not name. If any of these balances falls between refreshes, the outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh.
How STX compares to other Bitcoin-layer chains
The natural comparison for Stacks is bitcoin itself, and the comparison has just inverted. Bitcoin's subsidy is capped and halves on a fixed schedule that no vote can change. Stacks began life imitating that shape — a coinbase with a halving path and a supply figure that converged on a stated ceiling — and on Jul 30 2026 it deleted the schedule by governance vote. STX is now an uncapped asset with a flat coinbase and a second issuance stream on top, which places it closer, in mechanism, to a continuous-emission proof-of-stake layer one than to the hard-capped chain it settles against.
Against those continuous-emission layer ones, however, STX still reads mild. A +1.21% projected 90-day net annualises near five percent, which sits below most uncapped smart-contract chains that pay staking rewards in their own token — and well below chains carrying live investor vesting cliffs on top of emission, where the calendar rather than the mint does the damage. Stacks has no such calendar left: its 2019 escrow is spent, and its only forward unlock is an endowment tranche that is already inside the counted supply. What STX lacks is the other side. Chains with a fee burn, a revenue buyback or a token-denominated staking lock all have some mechanism converting activity back into demand for the unit. Stacks converts activity into demand for bitcoin — miners spend it, stackers receive it — so STX is the one thing the system never buys.
Against exchange tokens and revenue-buyback assets, the contrast is starker still: those retire supply out of earnings, while Stacks issues supply to fund an endowment that then spends it. That is a deliberate design choice with a stated horizon — SIP-031 says annual inflation falls below two percent once the five-year programme completes, and contemplates burning the later tranches if the endowment overshoots its funding target. Neither of those is a flow today.
What to watch in the next 90 days
The endowment tranche unlocks a twenty-fourth of its 100M STX roughly every 30 days, with firings due around Aug 30 2026, Sep 29 2026 and Oct 30 2026 — about 4.2M STX each, already inside supply, and worth watching only for whether they leave the treasury. The Genesis Bond, the first Bitcoin protocol bond on Stacks, is expected in late Aug 2026 with no committed size; a large one would be the first mechanism in the system capable of locking STX for a fixed term. Stacked supply is the third watch line: it has fallen from 566.01M to 392.45M STX across the window and the next cycle currently shows 308.73M, so the PoX-5 migration is not yet complete. Fourth, the endowment wallet balances — a sustained fall would open Sell #3 for the first time. Fifth, PoX-6: SIP-045 states explicitly that the next upgrade will reassess the emission schedule, and the 1,000 STX coinbase is described as provisional until it does.
Summary
Stacks issues 13.72M STX a quarter from two protocol mints and destroys none of it, for a net of +0.74% over the last 90 days and +1.21% projected as the post-upgrade rates carry a full window. The structural mechanism is that both mints stepped up on Jul 30 2026, when the PoX-5 upgrade restored the mining coinbase to 1,000 STX per Bitcoin block and deleted the reduction schedule entirely, leaving STX with no halving path and no supply cap. The key risk is that the buy side is empty by design: Stacks pays its stackers in bitcoin, burns bitcoin rather than STX, and runs no buyback, so nothing in the system bids for the token. The ceiling that used to exist is gone; what remains is a stated intention that annual inflation falls below two percent once the five-year endowment programme finishes, and an option — not a commitment — to burn its later tranches.
MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of STX, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Updated Aug 19 2026.