Originally published at https://mrnasdog.com/research/apt/inflation
➜ Start with the Aptos coin page for the short answer (should you buy APT?) and its price drivers: mrnasdog.com/research/apt
APT Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing
APT, the coin of the Aptos network, is inflationary: the tradable supply grew +4.33% in the 90 days to Oct 16 2026 and we project about +2.03% for the next 90 days. Monthly vesting unlocks brought 33.93M APT and staking rewards minted 4.74M APT, while the gas-fee burn removed a net 403.5K APT. The monitor reads +4.60%, so the two readings agree. The last team and investor unlock was on Oct 12 2026, so the unlock part of new supply drops by about 60% from November, and a 2.1B hard cap sets the ceiling.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Over the 90 days from Jul 18 to Oct 16 2026, Aptos added 38.67M APT to the market and removed 403.5K APT, a net +4.33% of the 883.05M APT in circulation. The monitor, which measures the same supply from a different angle, reads +4.60% for its own 90-day window, a gap of 0.26 percentage points. That is inside our 0.5-point tolerance, so no warning chip is needed: both readings see the same three monthly unlocks and the same staking mint. For the next 90 days the APT ledger shows 18.37M APT in and the same 403.5K APT out, or about +2.03%. Our label for APT today: an unlock-driven token whose heaviest vesting cliff is now behind it, still inflationary on a falling slope.
Sell pressure: where new APT comes from
Protocol inflation: 4.74M APT. Aptos is a proof-of-stake chain, and every two hours, at the end of each epoch, the protocol mints new APT for the validators and the people who stake with them. The yearly rate is fixed at 2.6% of staked APT, down from 5.19% after a governance vote in March 2026 that halved it. About 755M APT is staked with 83 validators. We added up the reward payouts at the epoch changes across the window and got about 4.74M APT, roughly 52,600 a day. The rate sits at its floor and no change is scheduled, so we carry the same figure into the next 90 days.
Vesting unlocks: 33.93M APT. The 1B APT created at the Aptos launch in October 2022 unlocks on the 12th of each month. Until this month that was 11.31M APT a month: 3.96M for core contributors, 2.81M for investors, 3.21M for the community pool and 1.33M for the Aptos Foundation. The releases on Aug 12, Sep 12 and Oct 12 2026 add up to 33.93M APT. Oct 12 2026 was the 48th and final month for the team and the investors. From Nov 12 2026 only the community and Foundation pools keep vesting, about 4.54M APT a month until 2032, which gives 13.63M APT in the next 90 days.
Foundation and unscheduled unlocks: 0. Every APT that is still locked sits in the community or Foundation pool and follows the monthly calendar above; there is no locked bucket without a schedule. Grants and any Foundation sales use coins that are already counted as circulating, so they move APT between holders and add no new supply. Long-term locked or bankruptcy: 0. No estate, trustee or court lock holds APT.
Buy pressure: where new APT goes
Programmatic buyback: 0. Aptos has no buyback. In February 2026 the Aptos Foundation said it is exploring a buyback or reserve that would buy APT with its cash or revenue, but nothing has started.
Protocol fee burn: 403.5K APT. Every gas fee on Aptos is paid in APT and destroyed when it is paid, and a second March 2026 vote made gas ten times more expensive to raise that burn. A small share is minted back to the validators who propose blocks. Net of that payback, the burn removed 403,519 APT over the window (about 484,600 burned and 81,100 paid back), around 4,500 a day. That is less than a tenth of the staking mint, so the burn slows APT inflation but does not stop it. An exchange that runs every order on the Aptos chain went live in February 2026, and the Foundation hopes it and similar apps will lift the burn far higher.
Foundation buy: 0. Nothing in the window shows the Foundation or any treasury buying APT. New long-term lock: 0. The Foundation has pledged to keep 210M APT staked forever and never sell it. That matters for selling pressure, but those coins are already counted as circulating and staked APT stays in the float, so the pledge removes nothing from the supply count.
Foundation and overhang
The APT overhang is fully scheduled. About 231.1M APT is still locked in the community pool and about 96.0M APT in the Foundation pool: together the 327.1M APT gap between total and circulating supply, and it matches the remaining calendar almost to the coin. Both pools release one 120th of their launch balance on the 12th of every month until October 2032. The team and investor allocations are now fully released. On top of that, the Foundation holds coins that already vested, including the 210M APT it pledged to keep staked; no wallet list is published, so we follow it through its own statements. We re-check the locked pools at every rebuild against total supply on-chain, and the Foundation pledge by hand every two weeks. If the locked balance falls faster than the calendar between refreshes, the outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh.
How APT compares to other proof-of-stake Layer 1s
APT now looks like most young proof-of-stake chains: a staking reward that never stops, a fee burn far too small to cancel it, and a launch allocation still vesting. What sets Aptos apart is that it has moved toward a fixed ceiling. A 2.1B APT hard cap was voted in 2026, about 890M above today’s total of 1.21B, and the staking rate was halved to 2.6%. Ethereum and Solana have no cap at all and pay stakers in new coins with no end date. Sui, which shares the Move language with Aptos, has had a 10B fixed supply since launch.
The bigger APT difference is the unlock calendar. With the team and investor vesting finished on Oct 12 2026, the monthly unlock falls from 11.31M to about 4.54M APT, roughly 0.5% of circulating supply a month. Chains still in their first vesting years, such as Sui, keep releasing team and investor coins every month. Against a coin like BNB, where a scheduled burn takes coins out every quarter and no new coins are created, APT is far behind: its burn covers less than a tenth of its staking mint, because fees per transaction are tiny even after the tenfold rise.
What to watch in the next 90 days
Nov 12 2026: the first monthly unlock without team or investor coins, about 4.54M APT from the community and Foundation pools. If the gap between total and circulating supply shrinks by more than that, something left the pools off the calendar.
Dec 12 2026 and Jan 12 2027: the next two community and Foundation releases, about 4.54M APT each.
A buyback or reserve: the Foundation has said it is exploring one. A start date, a size or a wallet would add a new buy row.
Longer-lock staking: the Foundation has floated higher rewards for people who lock their stake for longer, with the total payout kept at the 2.6% level. Any vote that changes the reward rate would move the staking mint directly.
Gas activity: the burn grew late in the window as transactions picked up. A lasting rise in on-chain trading would lift the 403.5K APT burn; a further gas-price vote would too.
Summary
APT is inflationary: over the 90 days to Oct 16 2026 the Aptos supply grew +4.33%, made of 33.93M APT in monthly unlocks and 4.74M APT in staking rewards against a net gas burn of 403.5K APT, and the monitor agrees at +4.60%. With the last team and investor unlock done on Oct 12 2026, we project about +2.03% for the next 90 days. The key risk is that the community and Foundation pools still hold about 327.1M locked APT, released at about 4.54M a month until 2032, while the burn stays small. The 2.1B hard cap is the ceiling.
MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of APT, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 16 2026.
Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/apt/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.