Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/stx/inflation by MrNasdog.
Stacks halved its miner reward from 1,000 to 500 STX per tenure on Apr 14 2026 — and STX inflation is going up anyway. A second protocol mint, the SIP-031 growth endowment, streams STX on every tenure and steps up from 475 to 1,140 per tenure on Jul 30 2026, inside this window. The Pressure Framework reads ~16.93M new STX over the next 90 days — about 5.51M from the coinbase and 11.41M from the endowment — against no buyback and no burn, for a net of +0.91%, up from +0.58% last quarter. Our supply monitor reads the realised last-90-day change at +0.63%, a gap of 0.05 percentage points — well inside tolerance, so no monitor-gap flag is raised. Stacks is uncapped, and the halving narrative is misleading: the endowment mint outruns the cut.
The verdict, in one paragraph
For the 90-day window beginning Jul 16 2026, the MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads STX at about +0.91% net supply growth — roughly 16.93M STX minted, with nothing on the buy side to offset it. Over the trailing 90 days the framework reads +0.58%, and our supply monitor reads that same realised window at +0.63% — a gap of just 0.05 percentage points, which does not raise a monitor-gap chip because it sits far inside the framework's half-point tolerance. The two measures agree almost exactly, which matters here because the number rests on a measured quantity rather than an assumed one: STX is minted per tenure, not per Bitcoin block, and miners miss roughly 14% of tenures. Reading 144 tenures a day overstates STX emission; the on-chain count does not. STX is best read as an uncapped Bitcoin layer whose inflation is rising through a halving, because a second, larger mint sits behind the first.
Sell pressure: where new STX comes from
Sell #1 — protocol inflation — is the coinbase miner reward, about 5.51M STX over the next 90 days. Stacks opens one tenure per Bitcoin block, and the miner who wins that tenure's sortition earns a fixed reward. SIP-029 aligned that reward with Bitcoin's own halving rhythm: it fell from 1,000 to 500 STX per tenure at Bitcoin height 945,000, which the chain timestamps as Apr 14 2026 — two days before this window opened, so the entire period runs at the lower rate. The next step-down, to 250 STX, is not due until Bitcoin height 1,050,000 around April 2028, so the coinbase is flat across both windows. On its own, that halving is genuinely deflationary at the margin — the coinbase alone would have added roughly 11M STX a quarter under the old rate.
Sell #5 — the SIP-031 growth endowment emission — is the row that overturns the halving story, and at about 11.41M STX it is now the largest single source of new STX, more than double the coinbase. SIP-031 passed in July 2025 with over 97% approval and creates 500M new STX over five years to fund a community endowment. Part of that is a per-tenure stream, and its schedule ramps rather than decays: 475 STX per tenure for the first year, then 1,140 STX per tenure from Bitcoin height 960,300 — roughly Jul 30 2026, squarely inside this window — and it keeps climbing to 1,705 in the third year. It is listed separately from the coinbase because it is a distinct mint with its own schedule — minted by consensus on every tenure, not released at a treasury's discretion, so the calendar sets its pace rather than any decision. Over the last 90 days it contributed about 5.24M STX; the step-up roughly doubles it. The remaining sell rows are zero: Sell #2 — vesting unlocks — is zero because every 2017-sale and genesis allocation finished vesting years ago and the chain reports supply as 100% unlocked, leaving no cliff to fire. Sell #3 — Foundation and unscheduled unlocks — is zero because no off-calendar release is dated in the window. Sell #4 — long-term locked or bankruptcy — is zero, because no bankruptcy estate applies to STX.
Buy pressure: where new STX goes
Nowhere — every buy row is zero, and that is what makes STX one-sided. Buy #1 — programmatic buyback — is zero: Stacks runs no token buyback, and no protocol revenue purchases STX on the open market. Buy #2 — protocol fee burn — is zero, and this is the structural point: Stacks does not burn fees. Network transaction fees are paid to miners as reward, never destroyed. A burn does exist on paper inside SIP-031, but only as an optional clause — it requires the endowment's liquid assets to exceed $1B and then a further community vote to devise the programme. Against a 2026 operating budget of about $27M, that trigger is remote, so the framework carries it at zero rather than crediting a conditional future. Buy #3 — Foundation buy — is zero; the endowment is funded by new issuance and is a net seller of STX, not a buyer. Buy #4 — new long-term lock — is zero: about 552.4M STX, nearly 30% of supply, is locked in stacking to earn Bitcoin yield, but that lock rotates on a roughly two-week cycle and re-opens each time, so it parks supply rather than removing it. With two mints on one side and nothing on the other, STX supply can only rise.
Foundation and overhang
The overhang is not a vesting cliff — it is the SIP-031 endowment holding contract, and it is fully readable on-chain. SIP-031 minted 200M STX as locked at activation on Jul 30 2025: 100M of working capital and 100M earmarked for sale by private placement rather than the open market, each releasing one twenty-fourth per month through Jul 2027. Because both tranches were minted before this window opened, they are already inside the supply the framework divides by — they are not new STX here, which is why they are tracked as overhang rather than booked as a sell row. The contract has received about 220.7M STX in total, has already paid out about 165.8M, and still holds about 54.9M at the latest refresh. That balance is read directly from the chain on every rebuild, alongside the per-tenure stream credited into it. The endowment is the single lever that sets STX's inflation path: if this contract's balance falls between refreshes faster than the published monthly schedule explains, that outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh.
How STX compares to other halving-model chains
STX borrows Bitcoin's halving rhythm and deliberately aligns to it — SIP-029 exists precisely to sync Stacks' step-downs with Bitcoin's. But the resemblance stops at the schedule. Bitcoin is hard-capped at 21M with exactly one mint, so each halving mechanically cuts its inflation in half and the direction of travel is guaranteed. STX is uncapped and runs two mints at once. Its April 2026 halving cut the first mint by half while the second was scheduled to more than double three months later — so a halving that would be unambiguously disinflationary on Bitcoin is, on Stacks, overwhelmed within the same year. That is the mechanism difference worth holding: on Bitcoin the halving is the whole emission story; on Stacks it is now the smaller half of it.
Against uncapped continuous-emission Layer-1s, STX still reads mild in absolute terms. Cosmos Hub (ATOM) mints near 10% a year through staking inflation, and many delegated proof-of-stake chains mint forever at several percent. STX at roughly +0.91% a quarter — under 4% annualised even at the raised endowment rate — is far gentler, and the endowment programme is finite: it ends after five years, after which Stacks' own modelling puts annual emission back under 2%. The sharper contrast is with chains that have a fee burn. Post-Merge Ethereum claws issuance back through its EIP-1559 base-fee burn and can tip deflationary when usage is high; BNB retires supply through a scheduled auto-burn. STX has no burn at all, so network usage never offsets emission — a busy Stacks is not a less inflationary Stacks. Its inflation falls only when the schedule says so, never because the chain is being used.
What to watch in the next 90 days
Watch Jul 30 2026 — Bitcoin height 960,300 — when the endowment emission steps from 475 to 1,140 STX per tenure. It is the single dated event in this window and it is what carries the net from +0.58% to about +0.91%. Watch the PoX-5 Bitcoin staking draft SIP, posted Jun 3 2026, which proposes restoring the coinbase from 500 back to 1,000 STX per tenure and adding a further 500 for roughly six months — up to 1,500 per tenure. It is a draft with no vote scheduled and drew immediate pushback for funding yield through issuance rather than the endowment, but if it passes it would be the largest change to this ledger by a wide margin and would roughly double the coinbase row. Watch the endowment holding contract balance, near 54.9M STX, since an outflow ahead of schedule would open Sell #3. Watch the endowment's liquid asset total against the $1B burn trigger — remote today, but the only path to any buy-side row existing at all. And watch the tenure rate, near 86%: if miner participation rises toward every Bitcoin block, real emission rises with it without any schedule changing.
Summary
STX is the uncapped native token of Stacks, a Bitcoin layer for smart contracts, and it is the rare asset whose inflation is rising through a halving. The SIP-029 coinbase halved from 1,000 to 500 STX per tenure in April 2026 and adds about 5.51M STX a quarter, but the SIP-031 growth endowment mints alongside it and steps up from 475 to 1,140 STX per tenure on Jul 30 2026, adding about 11.41M — more than double the miner reward and enough to push the net from +0.58% to about +0.91%. There is no buyback and no fee burn: fees go to miners, so nothing offsets either mint, and roughly 30% of supply sitting in stacking only rotates rather than locks. The key risk is that the endowment ramp is not finished — it climbs again to 1,705 STX per tenure in its third year — while the draft PoX-5 proposal would restore the coinbase to 1,000 and temporarily lift it to 1,500. STX has no cap and no burn, so the only ceiling on its supply is the emission schedule itself, and that schedule currently points up.
MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of STX, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Updated Jul 16 2026.
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