UNI Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Mixed flows · supply roughly steady

UNI supply was roughly steady over the 90 days from Jul 24 to Oct 22 2026, with a slight shrink of −0.09%. The Uniswap treasury paid out 5.00M UNI in its quarterly growth budget, while the Uniswap fee switch destroyed 5.47M UNI and a governance-linked wallet returned 113,138 UNI to the treasury. For the next 90 days we expect about +0.04%: one more 5M UNI payment on Jan 1 2027 against a burn of about 4.74M UNI at today’s price. UNI can never pass its 1B cap, and no new UNI has ever been minted.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the last 90 days the circulating UNI supply moved by −0.09%, from about 625.23M to 624.59M UNI. Outside trackers read −0.15% for the same period, a gap of only 0.05 points, so no data-conflict warning is shown on the UNI page. The next 90 days project to +0.04%, which is flat for practical purposes. The cite-able label for Uniswap today is simple: a fee-burn token whose burn now cancels almost all of its treasury spending.

Sell pressure: where new UNI comes from

Protocol inflation is zero. The UNI token contract still holds exactly 1,000,000,000 UNI, the same number it launched with in September 2020. Uniswap governance does keep a right to mint up to 2% a year, about 20M UNI, and that right has been open since Jan 1 2024. It has never been used, and no Uniswap governance vote proposes to use it. We read it on-chain at every rebuild because it is the one way the UNI supply could grow past today’s numbers.

Vesting unlocks: 5.00M UNI. Under the UNIfication plan that passed in December 2025, Uniswap Labs receives a growth budget of 20M UNI a year, paid as 5M UNI each calendar quarter by an on-chain vesting contract that draws from the Uniswap treasury. Payments so far landed on Jan 5, Apr 10, Jul 14 and Oct 1 2026. Only the Oct 1 2026 payment falls inside this window. The treasury is the one pile of UNI not counted as circulating, so every growth payment is real new supply on the market. The original team and investor vesting from 2020 finished long ago.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks: zero. The Uniswap Foundation, Uniswap Labs and the original airdrop contract all hold UNI that already counts as circulating, so when they spend, sell or pay it out, no new UNI reaches the count. Labs passed its growth payments on within days, and its receiving wallet held almost nothing at the end of the window.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy: zero. No bankruptcy estate, court case or long lockup holds UNI that could be released.

Buy pressure: where new UNI goes

Programmatic buyback: 5.47M UNI burned. Since the UNIfication vote, the Uniswap fee switch sends a share of trading fees from Uniswap pools on more than a dozen chains into on-chain fee jars. Anyone can take what is in a jar, but only by destroying a fixed lot of 2,000 or 4,000 UNI. Lots burned on other chains are bridged home and destroyed on Ethereum. Between Jul 24 and Oct 22 2026 that removed 5,474,001 UNI, worth about $32.4M when burned. The pace jumped after Uniswap v4 fees and Robinhood Chain fees were switched on on Jul 27 2026, peaked in early September, and has slowed since.

Because the burn is paid for with fee dollars, a higher UNI price means fewer UNI destroyed for the same trading activity. At the fee pace seen since Jul 27 2026 and a UNI price of $7.02, the next 90 days would burn about 4.74M UNI.

Protocol fee burn: zero on its own. The fees themselves are not destroyed; they reward whoever burns UNI, so the burn is counted once, in the buyback row above.

Foundation buy: 113,138 UNI. On Jul 30 2026 a governance-linked wallet sent 113,138 UNI back into the Uniswap treasury, part of it bought on the market. That moved the coins out of circulation. It was a single event with no schedule, so we project nothing from it for the next 90 days.

New long-term lock: zero. UNI has no staking lock. Coins used for Uniswap governance votes stay in their owners’ wallets and still count as circulating.

Foundation and overhang

The largest overhang is the Uniswap governance treasury, which holds about 262.25M UNI, roughly 30% of all UNI still in existence. It is the only UNI outside the circulating count, and 20M UNI of it is already approved for the next four growth payments. We read its balance on-chain at every rebuild. The treasury also holds the dormant 2% mint right.

Inside the circulating count, we track the Uniswap Foundation, which reported 15.1M UNI at the end of 2025; the original 2020 airdrop contract, which still holds about 12.01M UNI nobody has claimed; the Uniswap Labs wallet that receives the growth budget, nearly empty after each payment; and the governance-linked wallet that returned UNI in July, which holds about 20.42K UNI. If the treasury’s balance falls between our checks by more than the scheduled growth payments, that outflow enters the Foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next refresh.

How UNI compares to other DEX governance tokens

Most exchange tokens grow their supply to pay liquidity providers. Curve’s CRV and PancakeSwap’s CAKE both create new tokens as rewards, and their burns or locks have to fight that steady printing. UNI is different: Uniswap pays no token rewards to liquidity providers, its supply has never grown past its launch amount, and its only regular new supply is the 5M UNI quarterly growth payment from a treasury that already exists.

On the buy side, UNI now looks closer to tokens with fee-funded buybacks, such as Hyperliquid’s HYPE or Aave’s AAVE, than to a pure voting token. The difference is the shape: Uniswap does not buy UNI in the market itself. It lets anyone claim the fee jars by destroying UNI, so the burn happens on-chain, in fixed lots, and the destroyed UNI can never return. A buyback that parks tokens in a treasury can be spent again later; a Uniswap burn cannot.

The trade-off is size. At about 0.9% of circulating UNI burned per 90 days, the Uniswap burn is large enough to cancel the growth budget but not yet large enough to shrink UNI quickly, and it rises and falls with trading on Uniswap.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Jan 1 2027: the next 5M UNI growth payment unlocks; past payments were collected between zero and thirteen days after each unlock.

Aggregator hooks, live since Oct 22 2026: Uniswap now routes trades through outside liquidity on Ethereum, Base and Robinhood Chain, and those trades carry a protocol fee that feeds the UNI burn. More routed volume would lift the burn above our 4.74M UNI estimate.

Fee switch expansion: the Arc chain was added on Oct 5 2026, and further Uniswap governance votes could switch fees on for more chains or pool types.

Burn pace and price: burns slowed from about 814,000 UNI in the busiest week of September to about 180,000 UNI in the last six days. A higher UNI price also means fewer UNI per fee dollar.

The mint right: any Uniswap governance proposal to use the 2% yearly mint would change this reading at once. None exists today.

Summary

UNI supply was roughly steady over the last 90 days at −0.09%, and we project about +0.04% for the next 90 days. Uniswap’s fee switch burned 5.47M UNI, slightly more than the 5M UNI growth payment the treasury sent to Uniswap Labs. The key risk is the burn fading if trading on Uniswap slows, while the growth budget keeps paying 20M UNI a year from a treasury of about 262.25M UNI. UNI can never exceed 1B, and no UNI has ever been minted.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of UNI, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 22 2026.

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