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

➜ Start with the Pendle coin page for the short answer (should you buy PENDLE?) and its price drivers: mrnasdog.com/research/pendle

PENDLE is inflationary on its tradable float even though no new PENDLE is being minted. In the 90 days to Oct 18 2026, 2.48M PENDLE reached the market from team Safes and ended vote-locks, and nothing left it, so the float grew +1.42%. The monitor reads +1.43%. The next 90 days project +1.86%, because 2.19M PENDLE of old vote-locks end before mid-January 2027. The Pendle fee buyback is real, but every coin it buys goes to stakers, so it takes nothing off the market.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Our ledger puts PENDLE’s 90-day net supply change at +1.42%: sell pressure of 2,476,065 PENDLE against buy pressure of 0, on a circulating supply of 173.85M PENDLE. The inflation monitor, which reads the market’s circulating figure on each day, shows +1.43% for the same window. The gap is 0.01 percentage points, well inside our 0.5-point tolerance, so no warning chip is shown. The forward 90 days read +1.86%. PENDLE is best described as a fixed-supply DeFi token whose float grows by release, not by printing.

Sell pressure: where new PENDLE comes from

Protocol inflation added 900,000 PENDLE to the market, and none of it was newly minted. The PENDLE token contract still holds a weekly emission schedule (it fell 1.1% a week until April 2026 and is now set to about 2% a year), but the last time anyone claimed it was March 2025. Total supply has sat at 281.53M PENDLE ever since. Instead, Pendle pays its pool rewards from the treasury: the main team Safe sent 400,000 PENDLE on Jul 20 2026 and 500,000 on Sep 13 2026 to a wallet that feeds the reward system. Those payments run about once a month, so we expect about the same over the next 90 days.

Vesting unlocks add 0. Team, investor and advisor allocations from the 2021 launch have fully vested, and no PENDLE vesting calendar is left.

Foundation and unscheduled releases added 670,000 PENDLE. On Sep 8 2026 the main team Safe sent 600,000 PENDLE through a middle wallet to an exchange, the same route it used for 600,000 on May 13 2026. On Aug 26 2026 a second team Safe paid out 70,000 PENDLE, part of a payment it makes roughly every two months. We count two more of those payments (140,000 PENDLE) in the next 90 days. The exchange sends have no steady rhythm (42, 236 and 118 days apart), so none is counted ahead.

Long-term locks released 906,065 PENDLE. The old vePENDLE vote-lock stopped taking new locks in January 2026, when Pendle moved to sPENDLE staking. It still holds 63.43M PENDLE, and the market does not count those coins as circulating, so every lock that ends and is withdrawn adds to the float. The lock contract’s own schedule shows 2.19M PENDLE of locks ending between Oct 22 2026 and Jan 14 2027, with the two biggest weeks on Dec 24 (644,616) and Dec 31 2026 (1,133,144). In the last 90 days owners took out a little more than what ended, so we count the schedule in full.

Buy pressure: where new PENDLE goes

The Pendle buyback counts 0 on our ledger, even though it is active. Up to 80% of Pendle’s trading and yield fees are used every two weeks to buy PENDLE on the market, and in this window the buyback contract bought 723,299 PENDLE. Every one of those coins was handed to sPENDLE stakers. Staked PENDLE is counted as circulating, and stakers can leave in 14 days, so the buyback moves coins from sellers to stakers without taking any off the market.

The protocol fee burn is 0: burning is switched off in the PENDLE token contract, total supply did not fall, and no PENDLE piled up at a dead address. Foundation buying is 0, because the team Safes only sent coins out this window. New long-term locks are also 0: the vote-lock takes no new coins, and the 31.13M PENDLE held for sPENDLE stakers stays inside the circulating count.

Foundation and overhang

Four places hold PENDLE outside the market, and we read each one on-chain at every rebuild. The vePENDLE vote-lock holds 63.43M PENDLE, of which about 1.92M has already ended but is not yet withdrawn; its biggest single expiry, about 32.18M PENDLE, falls in January 2028. The main team Safe holds 19.75M PENDLE and is the source of the reward payments and exchange sends. The ecosystem Safe holds 16.12M PENDLE and has not moved since Apr 30 2026. A second team Safe holds 7.77M PENDLE.

One more overhang does not exist yet. The PENDLE token contract would mint 9.84M PENDLE today if the rewards wallet claimed the emissions it has skipped since March 2025, and that amount grows by about 2% of supply a year. It last claimed 23.08M PENDLE in one go, so this can happen without warning. A fresh mint would land in a team wallet first and reach the market only when it is paid out. If any of these balances falls between our refreshes, the outflow enters the sell ledger at the next refresh.

How PENDLE compares to other DeFi governance tokens

Most DeFi governance tokens grow their supply by minting rewards on a schedule. Curve’s CRV, whose vote-lock design vePENDLE copied, still mints new CRV to its pools every week. PENDLE has the same kind of emission written into its contract but has stopped using it, and pays rewards from coins that already exist. That makes PENDLE’s total supply flat while its tradable float still grows, because the coins come out of team wallets that the market had counted as locked.

The buyback is also built differently from the ones that shrink supply. Where a protocol destroys the coins it buys, or parks them in a wallet the market does not count, each purchase takes coins off the market. Pendle gives the PENDLE it buys straight to sPENDLE stakers, so its buyback works more like a staking yield paid in PENDLE than like a burn: it rewards holders but leaves the float the same size.

Finally, PENDLE is retiring a long lock rather than adding one. Moving from multi-year vePENDLE locks to sPENDLE with a 14-day exit means the 63.43M PENDLE still in the old vote-lock will drain into the float over the next two years, with the largest part in early 2028.

What to watch in the next 90 days

The vote-lock expiry weeks of Dec 24 2026 and Dec 31 2026, which free about 1.78M PENDLE between them, plus the 205,008 PENDLE ending on Nov 12 2026.

The main team Safe’s monthly reward payments and any new send to an exchange; the last one was 600,000 PENDLE on Sep 8 2026, about four months after the one before it.

Any claim of the skipped emissions, which would mint about 9.84M PENDLE at once into a team wallet.

Pendle’s fees, which set the size of each two-week buyback, and any change to where the bought PENDLE goes.

Summary

PENDLE’s tradable supply grew +1.42% in the 90 days to Oct 18 2026 and is projected to grow +1.86% in the next 90 days, with the monitor in agreement at +1.43%. No PENDLE is being minted; the growth comes from team Safes paying rewards and sending coins to an exchange, and from old vePENDLE locks ending. The fee buyback of 723,299 PENDLE goes to stakers and does not reduce the float. The key risk is the 9.84M PENDLE the token contract could still mint, and the 63.43M PENDLE left in the old vote-lock that will keep reaching the market through 2028.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of PENDLE, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 18 2026.

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