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

Celestia's supply is growing, and most of the growth is unlocks, not new coins. Over the last 90 days 31.01M TIA came out of the team and R&D unlock streams and 6.62M TIA was minted for stakers, against just 500 TIA burned. Net, TIA supply rose +3.85%, close to the monitor's +4.05%. The next 90 days should be lighter at +2.72%: the team stream ends on Oct 30 2026 and the yearly issuance rate drops on Oct 31 2026, but a 125.94M TIA reserve has no release date at all.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Across the last 90 days, 37.63M TIA reached the market and only 0.0005M TIA left it, so circulating TIA grew a net +3.85% on a base of 977.97M. Our inflation monitor, which reads the same classified circulating figure day by day, shows +4.05% for the same 90 days. The gap is 0.20 percentage points, inside our 0.5-point line, so no warning chip is shown. Most of that gap is simply which base the two numbers divide by: the monitor uses the supply of 90 days ago, we use today's. For the next 90 days we project 26.60M TIA in and nothing out, or +2.72%. Celestia is a chain still paying out its launch allocations: inflationary by unlock schedule, with a modest staking mint on top.

Sell pressure: where new TIA comes from

Protocol inflation: 6.62M TIA. The Celestia mint creates new TIA in every block and pays it to stakers. The yearly rate is set by code: it started this third year at 2.32% of supply, which works out to about 26.87M TIA a year, and it falls by 6.7% of itself each year until it reaches a 1.5% floor. The mint is paid by time, not by block count, so faster blocks do not create more TIA. On-chain, total supply rose 6,619,379 TIA across the window; add back the 500 TIA that was burned and the mint comes to 6.62M, matching the coded rate to within about one TIA. On Oct 31 2026 the rate steps down to 2.17%, about 25.61M TIA a year, so the next 90 days should mint about 6.39M TIA.

Vesting unlocks: 31.01M TIA. Two launch allocations still open a little every day. The Celestia Labs team share, 176.37M TIA in total, releases about 161,065 TIAa day and finishes on Oct 30 2026. The R&D and ecosystem share held by the Celestia Foundation, 267.94M TIA in total, releases about 183,524 TIA a day until Oct 30 2027. Together they opened 31.01M TIA in the last 90 days. With the team stream ending three weeks into the next window, the forward figure drops to 20.21M TIA. The seed and Series A&B investor unlocks finished on Oct 30 2025.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks: 0. The largest locked pile is the public allocation kept for future initiatives, 125.94M TIA. It has no schedule and can only be spent after an on-chain vote, and no such vote has been filed; the last proposal that passed was in December 2025. We saw no release from it, so the row is zero and the pile is watched.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy: 0.No estate, trustee or court case holds TIA, and the early backers' long locks all ended a year ago, so nothing in this row is waiting to pay out.

Buy pressure: where new TIA goes

Programmatic buyback: 0. No contract or treasury buys TIA back. The Sustainable Blob Economy plan, revised on Sep 22 2026, explores paid capacity deals for rollups and someday using real income to replace part of the new TIA, but nothing is switched on and every step still needs its own vote.

Protocol fee burn: 0. Celestia does not burn fees. What rollups pay for blob space goes to validators and stakers. The Fibre payment system in the v10 upgrade sends its payments the same way, so it adds no burn.

Foundation buy: 0.The Foundation's last purchase was 43.45M TIA bought from one early fund in July 2025, more than a year ago, and those coins were passed on to new buyers. Nothing similar happened this window.

New long-term lock: 0. About 477.79M TIA is staked, down from 502.05M at the start of the window. Staked TIA still counts as circulating, so staking removes nothing from the float; it only decides who receives the new mint.

Governance deposit burn: 500 TIA. On Oct 6 2026 the chain destroyed 500 TIAfrom a cancelled governance proposal's deposit. It is the only TIA burn in the window and a one-off, so the next 90 days count zero.

Foundation and overhang

Three piles sit outside the circulating supply today, and together they explain the whole gap between total and circulating TIA. The future-initiatives reserve holds 125.94M TIAwith no schedule. The Foundation's R&D and ecosystem share still locked is 71.19M TIA, opening a little each day until Oct 30 2027. The team share still locked is 3.69M TIA, gone by Oct 30 2026. The last two are already counted in the vesting row; the reserve is not, because nothing says when it moves.

Inside the float, the Foundation runs an operations wallet that pays grants and contributors; it fell from 20.68M to 19.16M TIA this window. Those coins already count as circulating, so the payouts add nothing new. The community pool, funded by a 2% cut of the mint, holds 3.59M TIAand has not been spent. We re-read these balances at every rebuild. If the reserve's balance falls between refreshes, the outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh.

How TIA compares to other proof-of-stake Layer 1s

Celestia's mint is small next to its unlocks. A 2.32% yearly rate that shrinks by 6.7% a year toward a 1.5% floor is one of the lighter issuance curves among proof-of-stake chains. Solana follows the same shape, a falling rate with a 1.5% floor, but started higher and cuts faster. What sets TIA apart today is the unlock calendar: the vesting streams added almost five times as much TIA as the mint did over the last 90 days.

The other difference is the missing burn. Ethereum destroys the base fee on every transaction, and Solana burns part of its fees, so busy days pull some supply back. Celestia sends every fee to validators and stakers, so higher blob demand pays stakers more but does not shrink supply. Until a revenue plan is voted in, nothing on the buy side grows with use.

Compared with chains whose launch allocations are fully unlocked, TIA still carries a scheduled overhang: 74.88M TIA on the calendar plus the 125.94Mreserve. Once the R&D stream ends in October 2027, TIA should look like a plain low-inflation staking chain, but not before.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Oct 30 2026: the Celestia Labs team unlock stream ends, after its last 3.69M TIA; unlocks per day fall from about 344,600 to about 183,500 TIA.

Oct 31 2026: the yearly issuance rate steps down from 2.32% to 2.17%, cutting the mint to about 25.61M TIA a year.

The v10 upgrade with Fibre: the mainnet software was published on Oct 7 2026 and switches on about seven days after five-sixths of validators signal for it. It keeps the same mint and adds no burn, but it is the first place new blob income would show up.

Blob economy and reserve votes: any on-chain vote that turns on a buyback or burn, changes the issuance rate, or spends the future-initiatives reserve would move this ledger directly.

Summary

Celestia (TIA) supply grew +3.85% in the last 90 days and is projected to grow about +2.72% in the next 90, with the monitor in close agreement at +4.05%. The growth comes mostly from launch unlocks, 31.01M TIA, plus a coded staking mint of 6.62M TIA, while fees are paid to stakers rather than burned. The key risk is the 125.94M TIA future-initiatives reserve, which has no schedule and needs only a vote to move. The ceiling on pressure falls over time: the team stream ends on Oct 30 2026, the R&D stream on Oct 30 2027, and the mint keeps shrinking toward a 1.5% floor.

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