Originally published at https://mrnasdog.com/research/monad/inflation
➜ Start with the Monad coin page for the short answer (should you buy MON?) and its price drivers: mrnasdog.com/research/monad
MON Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing
Monad (MON) is inflationary, and the biggest step is still ahead. In the 90 days to Oct 19 2026, 430.4M MON reached the market — 182.3M from staking rewards and 248.2M from Monad Foundation payouts — while the fee burn destroyed only 36.5M. That is +3.33% of the 11.83B MON in circulation. On Nov 24 2026 the first-year lock ends and 15.62B team and investor MON unlocks at once, so the next 90 days read about +142.72%. The monitor reads +0.01%, because the figure it follows has not moved since April.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Over the last 90 days, net new MON in the market came to +3.33% of circulating supply, and the next 90 days project to +142.72%. The monitor reads +0.01% for the same 90 days, a gap of 3.32 percentage points, so the page carries a ⚠ monitor gap note. The reason is on the monitor’s side: the circulating figure it reads sat near 10.83B MON from launch, stepped once to 11.83B MON on Apr 14 2026 and has stayed there, while the chain kept minting new MON every block. Our reading stays. Monad today is a young chain with a small free float and a very large locked overhang: steady staking inflation now, and an unlock bigger than the whole float in five weeks.
Sell pressure: where new MON comes from
Protocol inflation: 182.3M MON in 90 days. Every Monad block mints a fixed reward for stakers. It was 25 MON per block until the MIP-12 upgrade on Jul 23 2026, which cut it to 18 MON per block while making blocks faster (from about 0.4 seconds to about 0.3 seconds), so the amount minted per hour barely changed. In these 90 days the chain minted 463.2M MON in total. About 61% of that goes to the stake the Monad Foundation delegates to validators, and those rewards stay in the Foundation’s Ecosystem reserve. The other 182.3M MON reached validators and outside stakers. At the current rate the next 90 days bring about the same.
Vesting unlocks: 0 last 90 days, about 16.48B MON next. All team and investor MON has been locked since the Nov 24 2025 mainnet launch, so nothing unlocked in the window. On Nov 24 2026 the one-year lock ends: about 10.70B team MON and a quarter of the investor allocation, 4.92B, unlock on the same day — 15.62B MON, more than all MON trading today. A monthly unlock of about 862.5M MON follows on Dec 24 2026 and continues each month until late 2029.
Foundation + unscheduled unlocks: 248.2M MON. The Monad Foundation pays grants, incentives and partners from its Ecosystem reserve through a small group of payout wallets. Those wallets sent out 248.2M MON more than they received in the 90 days, with payments spread through the whole window, so we expect about the same in the next 90 days. The reserve itself has no unlock schedule.
Long-term locked or bankruptcy: 0. Monad has no bankruptcy estate and no court-held MON; every locked coin belongs to the team, investor or Category Labs allocations covered above.
Buy pressure: where new MON goes
Programmatic buyback: 0. The Monad protocol does not buy MON back. Fees are either burned or paid to the block’s validator.
Protocol fee burn: 36.5M MON in 90 days. The base part of every Monad fee is destroyed. Monad charges for the gas limit a user sets rather than the gas a transaction ends up using, and the base fee almost always sits at its floor, so the burn follows how much block space people book. It grew through the window, with 14.0M MON burned in the last 30 days alone, but in total it is only about 8% of the new MON minted.
Foundation buy: 0. Category Labs, the company that builds Monad, has permission to buy up to $80M of MON in the open market until Dec 31 2026, but it has not disclosed any purchase or wallet. In August 2026 the Monad Foundation offered to buy locked MON from early investors; nearly all of them declined, and anything it bought stays locked, so no MON left the market.
New long-term lock: 0. About 15.44B MON is staked, most of it delegated by the Foundation. Staked MON can be withdrawn, so it still counts as circulating, and locked team and investor MON cannot be staked at all.
Foundation and overhang
The Monad Foundation controls the largest pool of MON outside the market. Its main Ecosystem wallet holds about 17.14B MON and did not move in these 90 days. Its 20 validator-delegation wallets hold 10.91B MON staked plus about 2.67B liquid, built up from staking rewards. Its payout wallets ended the window almost empty, at about 22M MON, after the 248.2M MON of payments, so a new top-up from the main wallet is the next thing to watch.
Beyond the Foundation, 3.95B MON belongs to the Category Labs treasury: a quarter of it unlocks on Nov 24 2026 and the rest monthly, into the company’s own hands rather than straight to the market. The locked investor MON the Foundation bought in August stays on the investor schedule and returns to the Foundation, not to traders. We read these wallets at every rebuild: if the Foundation’s or Category Labs’ balances fall between checks, that outflow joins Foundation + unscheduled unlocks at the next check.
How MON compares to other new high-speed Layer 1s
Monad belongs to the group of fast Layer 1 chains launched with a small public float and most of the supply held by the team, investors and a foundation. In that group the main supply question is rarely staking inflation — it is the unlock calendar. MON’s issuance is modest for a proof-of-stake chain, close to 2% of all MON a year, but because only about 11.7% of MON circulates, the same issuance is a much larger share of the float. A chain whose free float is already most of its supply feels new coins far less.
Monad’s fee design follows Ethereum: the base fee is burned and the tip goes to the block producer. On Ethereum the burn can match issuance when blocks are busy; on Monad the base fee rests at its floor and the burn covers less than a tenth of new MON. Sui takes a different route, paying stakers from a fixed 10B supply set aside at launch rather than minting new coins, so its total never grows. Monad has no supply cap: new MON is minted every block, and only the burn works against it.
What sets MON apart is the size of its first unlock against its float. Many young chains release their team and investor coins in small monthly steps from the start. Monad held everything for a full year and releases about 15.62B MON in one day, then about 862.5M MON a month — so the float more than doubles in a single day.
What to watch in the next 90 days
Nov 24 2026: the first-year unlock of about 15.62B team and investor MON, plus about 988M MON into the Category Labs treasury — watch exchange deposits from the newly unlocked wallets.
Dec 24 2026: the first monthly unlock, about 862.5M MON, with the same amount due every month after.
Dec 31 2026: the end of Category Labs’ permission to buy up to $80M of MON — any disclosed purchase would be the first real buyer on the other side.
Foundation payouts: the payout wallets are close to empty, so a top-up from the 17.14B MON main wallet would show whether grant spending keeps its pace of about 248M MON per 90 days.
Staking after the unlock: unlocked team and investor MON can be staked, which would shrink the Foundation’s share of rewards and send more of each block’s new MON to the market.
Summary
Monad (MON) is inflationary: +3.33% net over the last 90 days from staking rewards and Foundation payouts, with a fee burn of only 36.5M MON against them. The next 90 days read about +142.72%, because the Nov 24 2026 unlock releases about 15.62B team and investor MON into a float of 11.83B, followed by about 862.5M MON every month until late 2029. The key risk is that newly unlocked holders sell; the only buyers on the supply side today are a small burn and an undisclosed company buyback. MON has no supply cap, so issuance continues after every unlock is done.
MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of MON, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 19 2026.
Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/monad/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.