XLM Inflation Analysis · September 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

XLM supply is growing, and it is growing without a single new coin being made. In the last 90 days the Stellar Development Foundation released 1.04B XLM (1,036,020,035) into the market from its own accounts, while only 659,284 XLM of fees left the float, so the circulating supply of Stellar grew by +2.96%. Our inflation monitor reads +2.85% for the same stretch. The Foundation still holds 14.72B XLM, and no published schedule limits how fast it pays it out.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days to Sep 29 2026, the net flow of new XLM into the market was +2.96% of the 35.01B XLM circulating supply. The monitor, which measures the same float from the outside, reads +2.85% — a gap of 0.11 percentage points, well inside our half-point tolerance, so no warning chip is shown. For the next 90 days we project about the same +2.96%, because the Foundation has paid out at this pace, almost every day, for months. XLM is a fixed-supply coin with a foundation-driven float: the total never changes, but the part people can trade keeps growing.

Sell pressure: where new XLM comes from

Protocol inflation is zero. Stellar once paid a small yearly inflation to holders, but that payout was switched off in 2019. The ledger keeps its own count of every lumen in existence, and it read 105,443,902,087 XLM at both ends of the window, exactly the figure it has shown for more than a year. Two network upgrades went live in the window, protocol 27 on Jul 8 2026 and protocol 28 on Sep 16 2026; neither one creates or removes lumens.

Vesting unlocks are zero.The only schedule Stellar ever had was the Foundation's yearly escrow from its 2019 plan. Those escrow accounts are now empty, with two XLM left in each, and no unlock tracker lists any future release for XLM.

The Foundation release is the whole story: 1.04B XLM in 90 days. Every lumen that is not yet circulating sits with the Stellar Development Foundation, in 15 accounts that the Foundation itself names. Those 15 accounts fell from 15.75B XLM to 14.72B XLM across the window. We checked this two ways: the account balances at both ends, and every single transfer in and out — the two agree to within two cents of a lumen, which is the transaction fees. In total 1.13B XLM went out to outside wallets and 97M XLM came back, a net 1,036,020,035 XLM. Most of it went to unlabelled wallets that passed it straight on; some went directly to large exchanges. Over the last 12 months the Foundation released about 3.07B XLM, and the pace has picked up lately: about 287M in July, 426M in August and 323M in September 2026.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply is zero. No estate, trustee or long lock holds XLM, so no court date or lock expiry can release a block of coins.

Buy pressure: where new XLM goes

There is no buyback. No contract or treasury buys XLM off the market, and the Foundation pays lumens out rather than buying them back. The 97M XLM that returned to its accounts arrived as plain transfers, not market buys, and it is already netted in the release above.

There is no fee burn.Stellar does not destroy fees. The ledger total did not fall, and the burn account from the Foundation's 2019 burn of about 55 billion lumens gained only 0.21 XLM in 90 days — a rounding speck.

Fees held in the fee pool: 659,284 XLM. Every Stellar transaction fee goes into a network fee pool that no account can spend today, and that pool is not counted as circulating. It grew from 10.06M to 10.72M XLM in the window. That is real XLM leaving the float, but fees on Stellar are tiny: the pool took in about one lumen for every 1,570 the Foundation released.

No new long-term lock. Stellar has no staking, so nothing can be locked for yield. Each account must hold a small minimum balance, but those lumens stay inside the circulating count.

Foundation and overhang

The overhang is large and it is all in one place. The Stellar Development Foundation holds 14.72B XLM, about 42% as much as everything now circulating, split into four programs: Development 1.88B, Growth 5.81B, Product and Innovation 3.63B and Assets and Liquidity 3.40B. The Foundation says it is updating how these holdings are allocated, and it publishes no release calendar. A separate network upgrade reserve holds 259M XLM and did not move in the window.

We read all of these balances from the chain at every rebuild. If any Foundation account or the upgrade reserve falls between rebuilds, the outflow enters the Foundation release row at the next rebuild — and on the current pace, it will.

How XLM compares to other pre-mined payment chains

XLM belongs to a small group of coins that were created all at once, with no mining and no staking rewards. For these coins inflation is not a protocol question; it is a question of how fast the organization behind the chain hands out its reserve. XRP, the closest match, also launched fully pre-mined and moves a company reserve to market; the difference is that XRP's reserve runs on a monthly escrow calendar, while Stellar's Foundation release has no calendar at all, only a track record.

Against proof-of-stake Layer 1 chains, XLM looks different again. Those chains create new coins every block to pay validators, so their supply grows by rule. XLM creates nothing, which sounds safer, but the Foundation release alone added +2.96% to the float in 90 days — more than many staking chains issue in the same time. And unlike chains that burn part of every fee, Stellar keeps its fees in a pool, and its fees are so small that they barely offset the release.

Against hard-capped coins with a halving, the picture is simpler: the XLM total is fixed at about 50.0B, so the float can never pass it. Today 70% of that total circulates. The remaining 30% is the runway for future sell pressure.

What to watch in the next 90 days

The Foundation's monthly pace from Sep 29 2026 to Dec 28 2026: a month above about 350M XLM would push the next reading higher, a month well below it would pull it down.

The Foundation's mandate page, which says the allocation of its holdings is being updated — a new split or a published schedule would change this forecast.

Any new protocol vote: the latest node software already supports the next protocol version, but we found no mainnet vote date as of Sep 29 2026. So far no upgrade has touched supply.

The 259M XLM upgrade reserve, which did not move in the window, and the fee pool, which should keep growing by about 650K to 700K XLM every 90 days.

Summary

XLM is a fixed-supply coin whose float grows only because the Stellar Development Foundation pays out its reserve. That release was 1.04B XLM in the 90 days to Sep 29 2026, against just 659,284 XLM of fees held back, for net supply growth of +2.96%, with the monitor at +2.85%. The key risk is the size of what is left — 14.72B XLM with no published schedule — and the ceiling is the fixed total of about 50.0B XLM, which no new coin can push higher.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of XLM, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Sep 29 2026.