XMR Inflation Analysis · September 2026 · Mixed flows · supply roughly steady
Monero (XMR) grows its supply slowly and on a fixed rule. Over the last 90 days the Monero tail emission paid miners 38,836 XMR, and nothing was burned, bought back or locked, so the net change was +0.21% of the 18.81M XMR in circulation. The inflation monitor read +0.26% for the same window. Monero has no supply cap: the 0.6 XMR block reward runs forever, but because it is a fixed number of coins, it becomes a smaller share of supply every year.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Our 90-day net for XMR is +0.21%, and the projection for the next 90 days is the same +0.21%. The inflation monitor reads +0.26%, a gap of 0.05 percentage points — well inside the half-point tolerance, so no warning chip is shown and no deep check was needed. Every coin added came from mining, and every coin that existed before the window is still there. In one line: Monero is a quiet proof-of-work chain with a small, permanent tail emission and no sink.
Sell pressure: where new XMR comes from
Protocol inflation is the only live row, at 38,836 XMR. The Monero block reward follows a curve that fell to its floor in May 2022; since then every block mints exactly 0.6 XMR. We read all 64,729 blocks of the window, from height 3,709,064 to 3,773,792, one header at a time. The target is one block every two minutes, or 64,800 blocks in 90 days; the chain came in a little slow, at about 120.1 seconds per block, so we use the measured count. Blocks larger than the penalty-free size earn a slightly smaller reward: 4,757 blocks crossed that line this window, but most only just, and the total cut was about 1 XMR. That gives about 432 new XMR a day.
Vesting unlocks are zero. Monero launched in April 2014 with no premine, no presale and no founder allocation, so there is no vesting schedule and nothing to unlock. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are zero because there is no foundation treasury sitting outside the float. Long-term locked or bankruptcy is zero: no court estate, trustee or long lock is holding XMR for a future release.
Buy pressure: where new XMR goes
All four buy rows are zero, and each for a clear reason. There is no programmatic buyback: Monero has no company, no revenue and no contract that buys coins. There is no protocol fee burn: Monero fees are paid from coins that already exist to the miner who finds the block — about 701 XMR this window — so they move coins but never destroy them. The small cut on oversized blocks is coin that was never created, and it is already taken off the emission figure rather than counted as a burn.
There is no foundation buy, because no treasury buys XMR on the market. And there is no new long-term lock: Monero is secured by proof-of-work mining with the RandomX algorithm, not by staking, so no staking contract pulls coins out of circulation. With nothing on the buy side, the Monero net equals the Monero emission.
Foundation and overhang
Monero has almost no overhang. Circulating supply is 18,811,406 XMR and total supply is only 39 XMR higher, so no wallet larger than that can sit outside the float. The one group-controlled pool is the community fund that pays developers for approved proposals from donations. Its balance is not public — amounts are hidden on the Monero chain — but by that size test its coins are already counted as circulating, so a payout moves existing XMR and adds nothing new. We re-check the fund and the project news every two weeks. If the community fund ever turns out to hold coins outside the float and they start to move, that outflow will enter Foundation and unscheduled unlocks at the next refresh.
How XMR compares to other proof-of-work chains
Against Bitcoin, Litecoin and Zcash, Monero makes the opposite trade on the supply cap. Those chains cut their block reward in half on a schedule until issuance reaches zero, so their supply has a hard ceiling and miners must one day live on fees alone. Monero chose a permanent tail: 0.6 XMR per block keeps paying miners even when fees are low. The cost is that XMR has no cap; the benefit is a security budget that never drops to nothing. Today the two models land close together — Monero's fixed reward adds about 0.84% a year, and that share keeps shrinking as supply grows.
Against Dogecoin, which also pays a fixed reward forever, Monero is far tighter: its tail is small next to its supply. And against smart-contract chains with fee burns, Monero has no sink at all — nothing ever leaves supply. That makes XMR one of the easiest coins to forecast: the next 90 days of Monero issuance can be written down today, block by block, with no team decision, unlock calendar or buyback program able to change it.
What to watch in the next 90 days
On Oct 5 2026 the FCMP++ and Carrot beta stressnet v3.0 forks the Monero test network at block 3,102,800. It tests the biggest privacy upgrade in Monero's history, but it runs on test coins and changes no emission rule on the main chain.
Watch for a mainnet date for FCMP++. None has been set as of Sep 30 2026, and the upgrade is about privacy, not supply — but any hard fork is the one place a supply rule could change, so we will read the release notes when they come.
Watch the block count. If blocks keep arriving close to every two minutes, the next 90 days add about 38,800 XMR. Watch block sizes too: a long run of oversized blocks would raise the size limit and shrink the small penalty further.
Summary
Monero (XMR) is mildly inflationary by design: a permanent tail emission of 0.6 XMR per block created 38,836 XMR in the last 90 days, a net +0.21%, with the same pace expected next. Nothing offsets it — no burn, no buyback, no staking lock — and nothing adds to it either, because there is no premine, no vesting and no treasury. The main risk to this reading is a future hard fork changing the reward, and none is scheduled. XMR has no cap, but its yearly issuance keeps falling as a share of supply.
MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of XMR, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Sep 30 2026.