Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/ray/inflation by MrNasDog.
This is the long supply read. For the signal, the price drivers and the questions people ask about Raydium, see mrnasdog.com/research/ray.
RAY Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Mixed flows · supply roughly steady
RAY supply grew by about 0.23% in the 90 days to Oct 21 2026, and we expect about the same in the next 90 days. No new RAY can ever be minted: the only coins that reached the market were 625,000 RAY of staking rewards, paid out of the reserve set aside when Raydium launched. The Raydium fee buyback bought about 4.63M RAY in the same 90 days, but it keeps what it buys in a wallet that already counts as circulating, so the hard cap of 555M RAY and the 282.7M RAY still parked in launch wallets matter more than the buyback for future supply.
The verdict, in one paragraph
Our ledger puts RAY net new supply at +0.23% for the last 90 days (Jul 23 to Oct 21 2026) and +0.23% for the next 90 days. Other public trackers show +0.33% for the same stretch, a gap of only 0.10 percentage points, so no warning is needed. The whole number comes from one source: 625,000 RAY of staking rewards. Nothing vested, no launch wallet moved, nothing was burned, and the RAY bought back with fees stays in a counted wallet. RAY is a capped DEX token with a slow staking drip: quiet on supply, with a large reserve that has not moved in a long time.
Sell pressure: where new RAY comes from
Protocol inflation: 625,000 RAY. RAY has a fixed maximum of 555M and the mint is switched off for good, so “inflation” here means coins leaving the reserve. Raydium pays RAY stakers from a rewards wallet. Between Jul 23 and Oct 21 2026 that wallet topped up the RAY staking pool four times: 200,000 RAY on Aug 10, 200,000 on Sep 10, 125,000 on Sep 28 and 100,000 on Oct 14. Raydium’s own documents describe about 1.9M RAY a year of emissions, which is roughly 470,000 every 90 days, so the recent pace is a little above that. About 44.3M RAY is staked today. The rewards wallet holds only about 154,000 RAY now, so it will need a refill from the mining reserve soon to keep paying at this rate.
Vesting unlocks: 0. Team and seed vesting finished on Feb 21 2024. Nothing is left on a schedule, and no unlock is dated in the next 90 days.
Foundation and unscheduled unlocks: 0. The launch wallets still hold about 282.7M RAY, and none of them sent a single RAY out in these 90 days. They have no published release dates, so we book nothing until one of them moves.
Long-term locked or bankruptcy: 0. No court case, estate or lock-up holds RAY that is waiting to be paid out.
Buy pressure: where new RAY goes
Programmatic buyback: 0 removed (about 4.63M RAY bought). Raydium sends 12% of every trading fee to buy RAY on the open market. In the 90 days the buyback wallet grew by about 4.63M RAY, more than seven times the new staking rewards, helped by a very busy September. But the bought RAY is held, not burned, and that wallet already counts as circulating, so the purchases move coins from traders into a project wallet without shrinking the count. The wallet now holds about 88.0M RAY.
Protocol fee burn: 0. Raydium has no burn. Its fees go to liquidity providers, the buyback and the treasury, and the RAY supply on-chain has not fallen.
Foundation buy: 0. No team or treasury wallet buys RAY apart from the fee buyback.
New long-term lock: 0. Staked RAY can be withdrawn at any time and still counts as circulating, so the 44.3M RAY in staking removes nothing.
Foundation and overhang
Five launch wallets hold RAY that is not yet counted as circulating: the mining reserve (about 123.3M RAY), the partnership and ecosystem wallet (about 138.6M RAY), the advisors wallet (about 11.1M RAY), the team wallet (about 7.3M RAY) and the seed wallet (about 2.3M RAY). Together that is about 282.7M RAY, more than the whole circulating supply. The team and seed wallets last sent RAY out in February 2024, and the mining reserve and the ecosystem wallet have not paid out in this window. We read these wallets on-chain at every rebuild.
Two more wallets matter but already count as circulating: the buyback wallet (about 88.0M RAY) and the protocol multisig (about 8.9M RAY). If any launch wallet’s balance falls between two checks, that outflow enters the foundation and unscheduled unlocks line at the next refresh. If the buyback wallet ever starts selling, that would be new selling from a holder that has only bought so far.
How RAY compares to other DEX tokens
Most exchange tokens on the market follow one of three designs. Some burn what they buy back: PancakeSwap destroys the CAKE it buys, so its buyback shows up as a real fall in supply. Others buy and hold: Jupiter keeps bought JUP in a separate wallet, and Raydium does the same with RAY. A held buyback supports the price while it runs, but the coins stay available, so the supply count does not drop. A third group pays new tokens to farmers and stakers with little or no buyback, which makes supply climb fast.
RAY sits in a calm spot among these. Its cap of 555M cannot be raised, the mint is off, and its only running emission is a staking drip of well under 1% a year. What sets RAY apart is the size of the parked reserve: about 282.7M RAY in launch wallets with no release dates, against 269.96M RAY in circulation. A burn-style token like CAKE carries no such reserve risk; RAY does, even though those wallets have stayed still.
What to watch in the next 90 days
The next staking top-up. The rewards wallet has about 154,000 RAY left. Top-ups came every two to five weeks in this window, so a refill from the mining reserve is likely before the end of 2026.
Any move out of the launch wallets. A transfer out of the mining reserve or the ecosystem wallet would be the first sign of a bigger release. Neither has a published plan.
The buyback pile. If Raydium ever chose to burn the 88.0M RAY it holds, RAY supply would shrink sharply; if it started using those coins, they would add selling. No such plan is public as of Oct 21 2026.
Trading after September’s rush. Fees, and so the buyback, jumped in September with tokenized-stock trading and a new launch platform. Early October was slower, so the size of the buyback in the coming weeks will tell whether the new traders stayed.
Summary
RAY is a capped token with its mint switched off, and its supply grew only about 0.23% in the 90 days to Oct 21 2026, all from 625,000 RAY of staking rewards. The Raydium fee buyback bought far more RAY than that, but it holds the coins in a counted wallet rather than burning them. The key risk is the 282.7M RAY still parked in launch wallets with no release dates, and the 88.0M RAY pile the buyback has built. As long as those wallets stay still, RAY supply grows by well under 1% a year and can never pass 555M.
MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of RAY, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 21 2026.
Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/ray/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.