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

Originally published at mrnasdog.com/research/sol/inflation.

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

SOL is inflationary, and it stays that way next quarter. In the 90 days to Oct 20 2026, 9.01M SOL reached the market: 4.85M from Solana staking rewards, 3.46M from locked stake accounts whose lock dates passed, and 693K released by the Solana Foundation and other reserved accounts. The base-fee burn took out 82.5K SOL and new locks held back 59.7K, so circulating SOL grew +1.50%; we project +1.26% for the next 90 days as the staking rate keeps falling and the monthly unlocks get smaller.

The verdict, in one paragraph

We put SOL’s 90-day net supply change at +1.50% on a circulating supply of 589.55M SOL, and the next 90 days at +1.26%. The monitor reads +1.17% for the same 90 days, 0.33 percentage points lower than ours, close enough that no warning chip is shown. Both readings agree on the direction and the rough size: Solana adds a bit more than 1% to its tradable supply every quarter. In one line: SOL is an uncapped, staking-paid Layer 1 whose inflation is falling slowly, topped up by the last years of locked-coin releases.

Sell pressure: where new SOL comes from

Protocol inflation — about 4.85M SOL. At every epoch boundary Solana mints new SOL and pays it to stake accounts and validators. The yearly rate was 3.59% on Oct 20 2026; it falls by 15% a year until it reaches a floor of 1.5%. Over the 90 days the chain created about 5.39M SOL. About 537K of that went into the Foundation’s stake and into locked stake accounts, which do not count as circulating, so about 4.85M SOL reached holders who can sell. Solana also made its blocks faster four times in this window, from 400 milliseconds to 350, 300, 250 and finally 200 milliseconds on Oct 9 2026. Each step shortened an epoch (now about 26 hours instead of about 50), but the protocol scaled its yearly clock by the same amount, so faster blocks did not print extra SOL. Next 90 days: about 4.61M SOL reaching the market.

Vesting unlocks — about 3.46M SOL. Solana has no team vesting contract, but some stake accounts carry a lock date, and until that date the coins are not counted as circulating. Most of these are coins linked to the FTX estate sales, released month by month: about 1.91M SOL unlocked on Aug 7, Sep 7 and Oct 7 2026, about 608K on Aug 11, Sep 11 and Oct 11, and at least 938K from other lots, including 625K on Aug 1. For the next 90 days the lock dates are already written on-chain: about 2.89M SOL, with roughly 639K on Nov 7, Dec 7 and Jan 7, about 204K on Nov 11, Dec 11 and Jan 11, 136K on Nov 28 and 100K on Dec 20. About 17.25M SOL is still locked, with releases running into 2028.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks — about 693K SOL. The Solana Foundation keeps about 27.25M SOL in stake accounts that are not counted as circulating. On Aug 26 2026 it split off 587,871 SOL and handed full control to another holder with no lock, which moved those coins into the market. Other reserved accounts sent out about 105K SOL more: two withdrawals of 49,250 SOL each on Oct 4 2026 and 5,948 SOL on Sep 25 2026. Nothing in public says when the next release comes, so the next 90 days carry 0 for this row.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy — 0. No bankruptcy estate is selling SOL from outside the market. The FTX estate sold its SOL in 2024; the buyers’ coins are the monthly unlocks counted above, so we count them once.

Buy pressure: where new SOL goes

Programmatic buyback — 0. Solana has no buyback. Listed companies and SOL funds buy coins that are already circulating, which moves SOL between holders and removes none.

Protocol fee burn — about 82.5K SOL. Every transaction pays a base fee of 5,000 lamports per signature, and half of it is destroyed; priority fees go to the block producer in full. Measured across the window, the burn came to about 82.5K SOL, close to 920 SOL a day, and about half of it came from validators paying for their own votes. That changes on Oct 21 2026: the Alpenglow upgrade moves voting off the chain, and in place of vote fees every validator burns a 0.8 SOL ticket each epoch to stay in the active set. With 668 validators that is about 44.4K SOL in 90 days, so the total burn stays near 84.5K SOL. The burn offsets less than 1% of the new supply.

Foundation buy — 0. The Foundation stakes, grants and moves SOL; we found no purchase of SOL by the Foundation or any project treasury. New long-term lock — about 59.7K SOL. In this window 82 new stake accounts with a lock date were opened; about 59.7K SOL in them came from ordinary wallets and left the market until the locks end, while another 500,000 SOL came from the Foundation and was never circulating. Staking alone is no lock here: about 438.6M SOL is staked, roughly 69% of all SOL, and staked SOL still counts as circulating.

Foundation and overhang

About 46.6M SOL sits outside the circulating count, in three groups we watch on-chain every day. The largest is the Solana Foundation’s stake, about 27.25M SOL across 694 accounts with no release schedule; in this window it released 587,871 SOL on Aug 26 and moved 500,000 SOL into a new account locked until Sep 13 2028. The second is about 17.25M SOL in dated locks, which unlock on fixed days into 2028 and are already in our 90-day numbers. The third is about 2.10M SOL in other reserved accounts, which sent out about 105K SOL in this window. If any of these balances falls between our checks without a matching lock date, that outflow goes into the Foundation row at the next check.

How SOL compares to other proof-of-stake Layer 1s

SOL sits in the uncapped, staking-paid group of Layer 1 chains. Like ETH, it has no supply cap and pays validators in new coins while burning part of each fee. The difference is size: ETH’s issuance depends on how much is staked and comes to roughly 0.2% of supply a quarter, while Solana runs a fixed yearly schedule, 3.59% today, falling 15% a year to 1.5%. Solana also burns only half of the base fee, and the base fee is small, so its burn removes well under 1% of what staking creates.

Against hard-capped coins such as BTC, which follows a halving schedule and has no locked insider supply left, SOL carries two extra sources of new float: the steady staking emission and the tail of locked coins from the FTX estate sales and earlier allocations. Against chains that run a buyback, SOL has none; its fee money goes to validators and stakers, not to buying SOL. A governance vote on Aug 28 2026 approved doubling the yearly drop in the staking rate from 15% to 30%, which would bring SOL to the 1.5% floor in about 2.8 years instead of 5.7, but the change is not switched on yet.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Oct 21 2026 — Alpenglow goes live. Votes leave the chain and the 0.8 SOL validator ticket burn starts; if the validator count changes a lot, the burn moves with it.

Nov 7, Dec 7 2026 and Jan 7 2027 — monthly unlocks. About 639K SOL each, plus about 204K on the 11th of each month, already in our next-90-day number.

The faster disinflation switch. The vote passed on Aug 28 2026, but the staking rate still falls at 15% a year. When the switch turns on, the rate starts falling twice as fast and our forward issuance gets smaller.

Foundation stake. The Foundation released 587,871 SOL in August and locked 500,000 SOL in October. Any new hand-off from its 27.25M SOL of stake adds straight to the next count.

Summary

SOL is inflationary: circulating supply grew +1.50% in the 90 days to Oct 20 2026, and we project +1.26% for the next 90 days. Staking rewards are the main source, about 4.85M SOL reaching the market a quarter at a 3.59% yearly rate that keeps falling toward 1.5%, while monthly unlocks of locked coins add about 2.89M SOL more by mid-January 2027. The fee burn, about 84.5K SOL a quarter even after Alpenglow, is too small to offset it, and there is no buyback. The main risk is the 46.6M SOL still outside the circulating count, above all the Foundation’s 27.25M SOL of stake, which has no release schedule.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of SOL, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 20 2026.

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