What is token inflation in crypto?

Inflation in crypto most often refers to token inflation: new units being created and added to a coin's supply. It is set by a network's rules or a project's smart contracts, not by a central bank. This is different from consumer price inflation, whose effect on crypto markets is covered in how does inflation affect crypto.

What is inflation in cryptocurrency?

Most blockchains create new coins to pay the people who secure them. Proof-of-work networks pay miners a block reward, and proof-of-stake networks pay validators and stakers. Those new coins add to supply. Bitcoin.org describes bitcoin's issuance as decreasing and predictable, with the reward halved over time until it stops at 21 million coins.

Not every coin follows that model. Some keep issuing forever. Monero has paid a permanent minimum reward of 0.6 XMR per block since May 2022, which the project says keeps miners paid to secure the network. Supply design is one part of a coin's tokenomics.

What is a crypto inflation rate?

The inflation rate is how much supply grows over a year as a share of existing supply. A fixed number of new coins each year produces a falling rate, because the base keeps growing. Dogecoin creates 10,000 coins per block, about 5 billion a year, and Trezor puts its inflation at roughly 3.9% a year and declining as a share of the total.

Other networks set the rate directly. Solana's docs describe an inflation schedule that began at 8% a year, falls by 15% of itself each year, and settles at a long-term 1.5%. In June 2026 a proposal, SIMD-0550, suggested doubling that rate of decline to 30%. The Defiant reported in August 2026 that validators had approved it in Solana's first onchain governance vote.

What are token emissions?

Emissions is the common word for new tokens a protocol releases on a schedule, especially in DeFi. Curve, for example, mints new CRV each year according to gauge weights that holders vote on. Its docs say the rate is cut by about 15.9% every year.

Emissions are different from unlocks. Unlocks release tokens that already exist but were held back from founders and investors, covered in what is a token unlock. Both add to the supply that can be traded.

What is an inflationary token?

An inflationary token is one whose supply keeps rising. That is not automatically bad or good. Issuance pays for security or growth, but holders who do not receive the new tokens own a smaller share of the total. People who stake often earn part of the issuance, which offsets that dilution for them.

The opposite is a coin whose supply shrinks, usually through burns, explained in what is a deflationary cryptocurrency. Issuance schedules can change through upgrades or votes, so figures here reflect November 2026.