Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/hnt/inflation
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HNT Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing
HNT supply is growing fast, and the main reason is new: since Aug 6 2026 a growth fund approved by Helium holders mints 196,000 HNT every day. Over the last 90 days the Helium network created 16.47M HNT (13.92M from the growth fund, 2.55M in network rewards) and burned 2.33M HNT for data credits, so net supply rose +7.21%, close to the monitor’s +6.99%. With the fund at full speed for a whole quarter and burns much lower since September, we expect about +9.77% in the next 90 days.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Our 90-day net for Helium (HNT) is +7.21%: 16.47M HNT minted against 2.33M HNT burned, on a circulating supply of 195.97M HNT. The monitor, which compares supply today with supply 90 days ago, reads +6.99%. The gap is 0.22 percentage points, inside our 0.5-point limit, so no warning is shown: both readings see the same thing, a supply that jumped once the growth fund started. For the next 90 days we expect +9.77%. In short, HNT is now inflationary by a funded mint: the burn that once pushed supply down is far smaller than what the new fund prints.
Sell pressure: where new HNT comes from
The biggest source is the HIP-149 growth fund mint. Helium holders approved it in a vote that ran from Jun 25 to Jul 2 2026: about 141M new HNT over three years for operations and growth, run by Nova Labs. It began on Aug 6 2026 and mints 196,000 HNT each day, 193,550 to Nova’s vault and 2,450 to the seven-seat advisory council that oversees it. In the 90 days to Oct 15 2026 that was 13.92M HNT. The flat rate is written into the program for about a year, until about Aug 2027, and then falls in a straight line to zero over two more years, so the next 90 days add another 17.64M HNT.
The second source is ordinary protocol inflation: the HNT paid to hotspots, stakers and the network’s service provider. The fixed schedule pays 7.5M HNT a year, about 20,548 a day, until the next halving on Aug 1 2027. On top of it the protocol re-mints part of the HNT that was recently burned, at most 1,644 a day, and a top-up for mobile data hotspots that is capped by recent burns. Together these came to 2.55M HNT in the window. The top-up ran only from Jul 20 to Aug 28 2026, when burns were high; with burns low since September we expect about 1.99M HNT in the next 90 days.
Vesting unlocks are zero: HNT had no pre-mine, and every coin since 2019 was earned through network rewards, so there is no team or investor calendar left to unlock. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are zero too, because every team wallet is already counted as circulating; when Nova sells growth fund coins, it moves coins that were counted the day they were minted. There is no bankruptcy estate or long-term lock releasing HNT.
Buy pressure: where new HNT goes
The only real sink is the data credit burn. Anyone who uses the Helium network pays in data credits, and the only way to create data credits is to burn HNT at a fixed dollar price. Burns came to 2.33M HNT in the 90 days, almost all from one Nova Labs wallet paying for mobile data carried for carriers. They fell sharply inside the window: 1.47M HNT in the first 30 days, 761,839 in the middle 30 and only 103,092 in the last 30. The largest carrier test, about 46% of mobile traffic, was switched off on Aug 31 2026, the HNT price more than doubled in late August (so each dollar of data burns fewer coins), and Nova’s main burn wallet has not burned since Sep 22 while it uses up data credits it already holds. Using the run rate since Sep 1 we expect about 492K HNT burned in the next 90 days.
There is no buyback now. Helium Mobile spent part of its revenue buying and burning HNT from Aug 18 2025, then stopped on Jan 2 2026 and has not restarted. There is no foundation buy: Nova Labs is selling growth fund coins, not buying. And new long-term locks are zero in our count: holders can lock HNT as veHNT to vote and earn, but locked HNT still counts as circulating, so it removes nothing from the float.
Foundation and overhang
The HNT we watch sits in a handful of wallets, all inside the circulating supply. The growth fund vault held 580,650 HNT on Oct 15 2026; it is emptied every few days, and 13.16M HNT has left it since Aug 6, almost all through a Nova Labs wallet to three outside wallets that now hold none. A Nova Labs treasury wallet holds about 1.43M HNT, and a Nova wallet that burns HNT for data credits holds 180,720. The MOBILE treasury (5.29M HNT) and the IoT treasury (2.26M HNT) pay out only when holders swap old MOBILE or IOT tokens for HNT. The council account receives 2,450 HNT a day and passes it to its members. We read these balances on-chain at every rebuild. If any of them falls between rebuilds, the outflow goes into the foundation-and-unscheduled row at the next rebuild — though, because all of them are already circulating, a sale moves coins between holders rather than adding new supply.
How HNT compares to other DePIN tokens
Helium was the first large burn-and-mint network: coins are minted on a halving schedule to pay hardware owners, and burned when customers buy data credits. In that design the supply can only shrink when usage burns more than the schedule prints, and HNT did reach that point earlier in 2026, when its supply was falling every day. Other burn-and-mint networks, such as Render, work the same way in principle: the burn depends on paid usage, the mint on a fixed schedule.
What sets HNT apart now is the growth fund mint. Most DePIN tokens fund their teams from a pre-mined allocation with a vesting calendar; HNT had none, so its holders voted to mint new coins for the operator instead. In supply terms the effect is the same as a large vesting stream: about 196,000 HNT a day, roughly nine times the network’s own schedule, going to one company that has said it prefers private sales with lockups but has made no binding promise. Unlike a vesting cliff, it cannot be front-run on a date — it lands every day — and unlike a fixed cap, it raises the effective maximum supply from about 206M to about 347M HNT.
Against Filecoin-style networks, which lock coins as collateral for storage providers, HNT has no large collateral sink: staking is voluntary and still counted as circulating. So the only lasting offset to new HNT is real data usage burned through data credits, and that burn is currently small.
What to watch in the next 90 days
Whether Nova’s burns restart. Its data credit escrow still held about 8.1B credits on Oct 15 2026, worth roughly $81,000 of data; once that runs low, HNT burns for mobile data should start again, and how big they are depends on carrier traffic after the Aug 31 2026 switch-off.
Mobile network data opens to the public on Nov 1 2026. Helium is moving mobile traffic, hotspot and reward records to public tables that anyone can query, which will make burns and payouts easier to check from outside.
Growth fund outflows. Every few days the vault sends its coins on through Nova Labs. How fast those coins reach exchanges, and whether Nova reports private sales with lockups to the council as promised, is the main sell-side signal.
Any curtailment vote. The advisory council can ask holders to reduce, pause or stop the growth fund mint, and a simple majority with 100M veHNT voting would do it. A vote like that would be the only way the 196,000-a-day rate changes before about Aug 2027.
Summary
HNT moved from a shrinking supply to a fast-growing one in 2026. The Helium network minted 16.47M HNT in the last 90 days and burned 2.33M, for a net of +7.21%, and we expect about +9.77% in the next 90 days, because the HIP-149 growth fund mints 196,000 HNT a day while data credit burns have dropped. The main risk is that the fund’s coins, which go to Nova Labs, are sold faster than usage grows. The ceiling is set in code: about 141M HNT over three years, flat until about Aug 2027 and then tapering to zero, unless holders vote to cut it.
MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of HNT, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 15 2026.
Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/hnt/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.