INJ Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

This is the long supply read. For the signal, the price drivers and the questions people ask about Injective, see mrnasdog.com/research/inj.

INJ supply is growing: about +0.79% over the last 90 days and +0.82% projected for the next 90. Injective pays its stakers in newly created INJ — 1,092,975 INJ in 90 days — while the monthly Community BuyBack burned 81,846 INJ, less than a tenth of the new coins. Every vesting schedule ended in January 2024, so staking issuance is the only source of new INJ, and its 4.4% yearly ceiling is the cap on how fast supply can grow.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days from Jul 18 to Oct 16 2026, INJ supply rose a net +0.79% of its 128.43M circulating coins on Injective and Ethereum together, and the next 90 days project +0.82%. The inflation monitor reads −0.11% for the same window, a gap of −0.90 percentage points, which is larger than our 0.5-point limit, so the page carries a ⚠ monitor-gap note. We walked the gap and it does not close: the supply count the monitor reads has stayed near 100M INJ every day since Nov 11 2025 — the fixed size of the original Ethereum version of INJ — so it cannot see coins created on the Injective chain. Our number stays. In one line: INJ is inflationary by design on its staking float, with a monthly burn that offsets only a small slice of the mint.

Sell pressure: where new INJ comes from

Protocol inflation is the whole story on the sell side: 1,092,975 new INJ in 90 days, about 12,144 INJ a day. The Injective chain mints a little INJ in every block and pays it to stakers, with 5% going to the community pool. The yearly rate floats between 2.2% and 4.4%, the range set by the INJ Supply Squeeze vote that passed on Jan 19 2026, and it climbs toward the top whenever less than 60% of INJ is staked. Today 46.3% is staked, so Injective mints at the full 4.4% of every INJ on the chain.

Two details shape the real number. First, the rate assumes a block every 0.5 seconds, but Injective blocks arrived every 0.61 seconds in this window, so fewer blocks meant fewer new coins — the real pace works out to about 3.6% a year. Second, on Jul 20–22 2026 a large exchange moved about 11.7M INJ from the Ethereum version of the token onto the Injective chain. Those were the same coins in a new form, not new supply, but because the 4.4% is paid on every INJ held on the chain, the move raised the base that issuance is paid on. For the next 90 days we project 1,107,840 INJ of staking issuance.

Vesting unlocks are zero: the team, investor and ecosystem allocations finished unlocking in January 2024, and unlock trackers show the full original 100M INJ released. Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are also zero, because every known holder already sits inside the circulating count, so a sale moves INJ between owners without adding supply. Long-term locks and bankruptcy releases are zero: no estate, trustee or long lock holds INJ.

Buy pressure: where new INJ goes

The programmatic buyback is the only buyer that removes INJ. Every 28 days the Injective Community BuyBack runs one round: holders commit INJ, the pooled INJ bids for a basket of fees earned by apps across Injective, the winning INJ is burned, and committers share the basket. Three rounds fell in this window — 27,400 INJ burned on Aug 5, 25,200 INJ on Sep 2 and 29,246 INJ on Sep 30 2026 — for a total of 81,846 INJ, worth about $498K when each round opened. None of the bid INJ is held in any wallet afterwards; it is destroyed.

Because the basket is a dollar amount of app fees, the burn in INJ shrinks when the INJ price rises. At the same dollar size and today’s price of about $8.71, the next three rounds — Oct 28, Nov 25 and Dec 23 2026 — would burn about 57,190 INJ, roughly 19,060 INJ a round.

The protocol fee burn is zero: nothing is destroyed when a transaction fee is paid, and app fees flow into the buyback basket instead. Foundation buying is zero: we found no purchase by the Injective Foundation or any project treasury in this window. New long-term locks are zero as well. About 57.18M INJ is staked, with a 21-day exit and 3.21M INJ leaving now, but staked INJ still counts as circulating, so staking removes nothing from the float.

Foundation and overhang

The Injective community pool holds 6,906 INJ. It refills from its 5% share of new coins and pays out to market makers through monthly governance votes, the latest passed on Oct 11 2026; we read it from the chain at each rebuild. The Injective Foundation has published no wallet addresses, so its holdings are unknown, and we check its announcements by hand. A listed company reported about 7.56M INJ in its May 31 2026 filing, bought on the open market. About 5.05M INJ still sits on Ethereum outside the bridge. The buyback contract holds 14,369 INJ committed by holders for the Oct 28 round, and those coins are headed for the burn.

All of these balances are already part of the 128.43M circulating INJ, so none of them books new supply today. If any of these balances falls between refreshes and the coins reach the market from outside the float, that outflow enters Sell #3 at the next refresh.

How INJ compares to other proof-of-stake chains

Most Cosmos-built proof-of-stake chains pay stakers from a mint and burn nothing, so their supply only goes one way. INJ uses the same staking-mint design, with the rate pulled up when staking is low, but adds a recurring burn funded by app revenue. That makes INJ a mint-and-burn chain: the mint is set by protocol rules, while the burn depends on how much fee revenue apps on Injective earn each month. In this window the mint was about 13 times the burn.

Against Ethereum, the shape is similar — new coins for stakers, part of the activity destroyed — but the burn works differently. Ethereum destroys the base fee of every transaction as it happens, while Injective collects app fees into a monthly basket and burns the INJ that bids for it. Against exchange tokens with fixed or shrinking supply, INJ has no hard cap at all: its limit is a rate ceiling of 4.4% a year, not a maximum number of coins. The Supply Squeeze vote lowered that ceiling, which slowed issuance but did not turn it off.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Oct 28 2026 — the next Community BuyBack round ends; its size in INJ shows whether app fees are keeping up with the higher INJ price.

Nov 25 2026 and Dec 23 2026 — the two following rounds complete the three burns booked in our next-90-day projection.

The staking ratio — at 46.3% the chain mints at the 4.4% ceiling; a staked INJ fund or other large stakers would need to add about 17M staked INJ to reach the 60% goal, above which the rate starts to drift down toward 2.2%.

Governance — any new vote on the mint range or the buyback would change both rows; the vote open on Oct 17 2026 on fixed gas for exchange messages does not touch supply.

Bridge moves — more INJ moving from Ethereum onto the chain would raise the base the 4.4% is paid on, adding a little to future issuance without being new supply itself.

Summary

INJ supply grew about +0.79% in the 90 days to Oct 16 2026 and is projected to grow about +0.82% in the next 90 days. Injective mints new INJ for stakers at the 4.4% ceiling — 1,092,975 INJ in 90 days — while the monthly Community BuyBack burned 81,846 INJ. With vesting finished and no hard cap, the key risk is that staking stays below 60% and the burn stays small next to the mint; the ceiling on new supply is the 4.4% yearly rate.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of INJ, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 16 2026.

Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/inj/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.