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

STX supply is growing, and the pace picked up this summer. In the 90 days to Oct 7 2026, Stacks created 20.43M STX of brand-new coins: 11.40M STX paid to miners and 9.03M STX minted into the Stacks Endowment, the network's growth fund. Nothing was burned and nothing was bought back, so net supply rose +1.09%. With the miner reward back at 1,000 STX per Bitcoin block since Jul 30 2026, the next 90 days point to about +1.24%. Stacks has no hard supply cap today.

The verdict, in one paragraph

The MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads Stacks at +1.09% net new supply over the last 90 days and +1.24% for the next 90. Our inflation monitor, which tracks the market's circulating figure, reads +1.13% for the same 90 days — a gap of only 0.04 percentage points, well inside our 0.5-point line, so there is no warning chip on the page. Both numbers say the same thing: every STX that enters the market is newly minted, and none leaves. The forward number is higher than the past one because the whole next window runs at the new, higher reward. A short label for STX today: a steady-mint Bitcoin layer with no sink.

Sell pressure: where new STX comes from

Protocol inflation is the largest source. Stacks pays the winning miner new STX for every Bitcoin block, and a reward that is missed when no Stacks miner wins a block rolls forward to the next one. Under the 2024 halving plan (SIP-029) that reward had dropped from 1,000 to 500 STX per Bitcoin block in April 2026. The PoX-5 upgrade (SIP-045), which the community passed almost unanimously and which went live at Bitcoin block 960,230 on Jul 30 2026, restored it to 1,000 STX and removed every planned cut. The new rate is called provisional: a future PoX-6 vote is meant to look at it again, but no date is set. Supply read at both ends of the window, minus the Endowment mint, puts miner rewards at 11.40M STX in 90 days. For the next 90 days, at the post-upgrade pace of about 992 STX per Bitcoin block, that becomes about 12.93M STX.

The second source is the Endowment mint (SIP-031, approved in 2025). At the start of every miner turn, called a tenure, Stacks mints extra STX straight into a system contract that only the Endowment can claim from. That amount stepped up from 475 to 1,140 STX per tenure on Jul 30 2026, as the plan scheduled, and stays there until about mid-2027, when it rises to 1,705. The contract received exactly 9.03M STX in the window, which matches the tenure count to within a few hundred STX. Next 90 days: about 10.30M STX.

Vesting unlocks book zero. Early investor and team vesting ended years ago, and the one schedule still running — the Endowment's 100M STX released in 24 monthly steps of 4.17M — sits inside a contract the market already counts as circulating, so a release only moves coins that are already in the float. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks book zero for the same reason: the Endowment wallets moved a lot of STX this window, but all of it was already counted. There is no bankruptcy estate, trustee or long lock paying STX out, so that row is zero too.

Buy pressure: where new STX goes

Nothing takes STX out of supply. There is no programmatic buyback: the Endowment's rules only promise a community vote on a burn plan if its liquid assets ever pass $1B, and they are far below that. There is no fee burn either — Stacks transaction fees go to miners. We read both burn addresses at the start and end of the window: together they gained about 0.1 STX, and total supply only went up. No announcement or on-chain flow shows the Endowment, the Stacks Foundation or Stacks Labs buying STX in the market.

Stacking is the closest thing to a sink, and it is real: about 448M STX is locked in the current cycle and about 493M STX is committed for the next one. Under PoX-5, STX is also the asset that Bitcoin stakers pair against, so the new Bitcoin bonds create a reason to lock STX. But locked STX still counts as circulating supply and comes back on a short cycle — the PoX-5 upgrade even released every old lock at once — so new long-term locks book 0. Stacking pays rewards in BTC, not in new STX, so it does not add supply either.

Foundation and overhang

The Stacks Endowment is the one team-linked holder we track, and we read its wallets on-chain at every rebuild. The Endowment mint contract holds about 63.56M STX, of which about 41.67M is still releasing in monthly steps and the rest is minted STX the Endowment has not yet claimed; it made no claim during the window. A multisig the Endowment filled on Aug 11 2026 holds 61.02M STX. Its operating multisig holds 33.57M STX after sending out about 43M STX in the window, and its claim wallet holds 6.86M STX. Together that is about 165M STX, close to 9% of supply.

Every one of those coins is already counted as circulating, so none of them adds to our sell rows when it moves, and the large outflows this window were moves inside the float. They still matter: the Endowment is the biggest single seller that could show up, and SIP-031 says its early STX should reach buyers through private sales with lockups rather than open-market selling. If any of these balances falls between our refreshes, we trace where the coins went at the next refresh, and anything that leaves the counted float enters the Foundation row then.

How STX compares to other Bitcoin-linked and uncapped chains

STX is mined against Bitcoin, but its supply works very differently from Bitcoin's. Bitcoin has a hard 21M cap and halves its block reward every four years; after the 2024 halving it issues about 450 BTC a day. Stacks first copied that idea with SIP-029, but SIP-045 removed the halvings, so STX now has a flat 1,000 STX miner reward per Bitcoin block and no cap. A flat reward means the inflation rate drifts down slowly as supply grows, but the number of new STX per day does not shrink on a schedule.

Against uncapped proof-of-stake chains, STX has one structural difference: it has no fee burn. Chains that burn a slice of every fee can offset part of their issuance when usage is high; on Stacks, busier blocks pay miners more but destroy nothing, so usage never pulls supply down. STX also carries a second, treasury mint on top of miner pay — a design shared by chains that fund an ecosystem fund from issuance — and here that treasury mint is almost as large as the miner reward.

Where STX does look like a staking chain is in its locks: a large share of supply is stacked, and the new Bitcoin bonds give holders another reason to lock. But unlike chains that pay stakers in newly minted tokens, Stacks pays stackers in BTC from miners, so the lock itself is not an extra source of STX inflation.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Bond 2 opens around Oct 10 2026. The second Bitcoin staking bond, mostly through liquid staking, will show whether more STX gets locked next to the BTC.

Endowment monthly releases around Oct 29, Nov 28 and Dec 28 2026. Each frees 4.17M STX inside the mint contract; they book zero because the coins are already counted, but a claim and onward transfer would show where Endowment STX is heading.

The first public STX holdings report.Stacks Labs' returning CEO, Muneeb Ali, promised an investor meeting and a first public report on holdings within 30 days of Oct 7 2026; it could show how much of the 165M STX Endowment pile is sold, lent or locked.

Any PoX-6 emission vote. The 1,000 STX reward is provisional. A PoX-6 proposal that cuts it would lower the forward number; none is filed yet, and the next Endowment step-up is not due until about mid-2027.

Summary

STX supply is growing at about +1.09% per 90 days, projected +1.24%next, because Stacks mints new coins twice on every Bitcoin block — about 1,000 STX for miners and 1,140 STX per tenure for the Stacks Endowment — and has no burn or buyback to offset them. Stacking locks a large share of supply but keeps it in the float. The key risk is the Endowment's roughly 165M STX, already circulating, and how it reaches the market. There is no hard cap: the miner reward is flat until a future vote changes it, and the Endowment mint keeps running until about 2030.

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