Manual Calculation: Solana Inflation Falls Toward 1.5% — Don’t Mistake Infinity Symbol for Unlimited Minting

I took the time to calculate Solana's inflation manually to avoid getting misled — similar to how some people are misled by XRP promises. If you don't run the numbers yourself, you can be carried away by tokenomics narratives, like XRP's monthly escrow releases or tokens that use the infinity symbol to imply unlimited minting.

Solana launched in 2020 with an initial inflation rate of 8% per year. That means newly issued SOL annually equaled roughly 8% of the circulating supply at the time.

The protocol reduces that inflation rate by 15% each year (a 15% annual reduction of the inflation percentage itself). Doing the math manually gives:

1) 0.08 × 0.85 = 6.8% — second year
2) 0.068 × 0.85 = 5.78% — third year
3) 0.0578 × 0.85 = 4.913% — fourth year
4) 0.04913 × 0.85 = 4.176% — fifth year

That matches reality: in 2024–2025 Solana’s inflation is roughly 4.2%. You can cross-check this on SolanaCompass (solanacompass.com), which shows about 4.36% — close to the manual calculation.

The small difference comes from Solana’s time units: Solana counts protocol years in epochs rather than standard 365-day years. One epoch is about 2.5 days (432,000 slots × ~0.4 seconds per slot), and a protocol year is set to 182 epochs. That makes a protocol year ~455 days, so epoch-based adjustments cause slight variance versus calendar-year math.

Using the protocol’s reduction formula, inflation will continue falling each year by that 15% multiplier until it reaches a floor of 1.5%, which is expected in about six years. After that point the inflation rate remains fixed at 1.5% annually.

So don’t assume the infinity symbol equals uncontrolled minting — Solana’s tokenomics include a clear decay schedule. When you compare this to fiat inflation (USD, for example, is commonly higher than 1.5%) the long-term inflation floor for SOL is relatively modest.

I’m not a Solana maximalist, but I worry the public misunderstands tokenomics. Compare Solana’s transparent inflation schedule to XRP’s escrow mechanics — XRP may be limited to 100 billion supply, but escrow releases can feel more opaque. And Bitcoin’s 21M figure has its own debates — ask BlackRock why they put a disclaimer about the 21M supply guarantee.

Check solanacompass.com and do the manual math yourself before drawing conclusions.

JEN