---
title: "Network Emissions"
url: "https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-concepts/network-emissions"
version: "1.6.0"
updated: 2026-08-12
last_verified: 2026-08-12
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Network Emissions

| Network Emissions |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Annual Emissions** | ~300 million XRD (scheduled) |
| **Minted, 12 months to 9 Aug 2026** | 297,171,771 XRD |
| **Total Emission** | ~12 billion XRD over ~40 years |
| **Eventual Ceiling** | ~24 billion XRD — a 2025 vote to cut it to ~18 billion is unimplemented |
| **Distribution** | Validators → Stakers (minus commission) |
| **Mechanism** | Protocol-level, minted per epoch |
| **Reliability floor** | 1.0 – one missed round → zero emission for that epoch |
| **Ledger reading** | Epoch 333,486 · state version 547,837,876 · 9 Aug 2026 |

## Overview

The [Radix network](https://www.radixdlt.com) mints new [XRD](/contents/tech/core-protocols/xrd-token) as **network emissions** to reward the [validators](/contents/tech/core-concepts/validator-nodes) and stakers who secure the ledger. Roughly **300 million XRD** is emitted per year, distributed at the protocol level to validators running [consensus](/contents/tech/core-protocols/cerberus-consensus-protocol) and shared with their delegators minus a commission. Emissions are the primary long-term incentive for [delegated proof-of-stake](/contents/tech/core-concepts/liquid-stake-units) security.

## Emission Schedule

A fixed **~12 billion XRD** is scheduled to be minted as network emissions over an approximately **40-year period**, working out to roughly 300 million XRD per year ([Radix Knowledge Base](https://www.radixdlt.com/articles-learn/what-is-the-xrd-token)). This emission is additive to the ~12 billion XRD created at the [Olympia](/contents/tech/releases/radix-mainnet-olympia) genesis, giving XRD an eventual maximum supply of roughly 24 billion.

Emissions are not paid continuously. At the **end of each epoch** the protocol mints a fixed batch of XRD and allocates it across the active validator set in proportion to the stake delegated to each validator ([Radix Knowledge Base](https://learn.radixdlt.com/article/how-xrd-staking-emissions-rewards-and-validator-fees-are-calculated-for-validators)).

## How Rewards Reach Stakers

At the start of every epoch the protocol checks the total XRD staked to each validator and automatically selects a **validator set of 100** by stake weight for the duration of that epoch ([Radix Docs](https://docs.radixdlt.com/docs/validator)). Each validator's emission share is reduced by its **validator fee** (commission) before the remainder flows to delegators.

Stakers do not claim rewards transaction-by-transaction. Delegated XRD is represented by [Liquid Stake Units (LSUs)](/contents/tech/core-concepts/liquid-stake-units), whose redemption value against the validator's stake pool rises as emissions accrue – so a staker's rewards compound automatically each epoch ([Radix Knowledge Base](https://www.radixdlt.com/articles-learn/how-do-token-holders-earn-and-claim-xrd-emissions-rewards)).

## Reliability and Penalties

Emissions are performance-weighted, not guaranteed. Each epoch the protocol scores a validator on its **proposal success ratio** – rounds it proposed against rounds it was due – and rescales that against the minimum reliability set in the [Consensus Manager](/contents/tech/core-concepts/consensus-manager) configuration to get the fraction of its share it actually receives.

Mainnet sets that minimum to **1**, which makes the outcome binary. A validator that misses no rounds in an epoch takes its full share; a validator that misses one takes nothing for that epoch, and neither do its delegators. There is no sliding scale and no 98% threshold: the floor is every round ([Radix Docs](https://docs.radixdlt.com/docs/consensus-manager), and `min_validator_reliability` in [the engine’s mainnet genesis config](https://github.com/radixdlt/radixdlt-scrypto/blob/develop/radix-engine-interface/src/blueprints/consensus_manager/invocations.rs)). The demand is deliberate: epochs run five minutes, so the node’s genesis builder requires full reliability across each short window. Stakers are pushed to seek out well-run validators, and node-runners to keep every round.

Forfeited emission does not go to the other validators, and it is not burned – it is **never minted in the first place**. The engine adds up the reliability-weighted stakes before it mints, so only the XRD that was actually earned is created. The [ledger reading below](#what-the-ledger-shows) measures the effect: 297.2 million XRD minted against a 300 million schedule, with the 2.8 million difference simply absent from supply.

## Emissions and Supply

Network emissions are inflationary by design, but two mechanisms temper their effect on circulating supply: emission forfeited to unreliability, which is never minted (above), and the burning of network transaction fees – **50% of every base network fee is permanently destroyed** by the protocol ([Radix Knowledge Base](https://www.radixdlt.com/articles-learn/start-here-radix-tokens-and-tokenomics)). The long-run balance between scheduled emissions and this fee/penalty burn is examined on the [Radix Economic Model](/contents/tech/research/radix-economic-model) page.

## The 2025 vote to cut the ceiling to 18 billion

The ~24 billion figure above is not the only number token holders have been given. In May 2025 the [Radix Foundation](/ecosystem/radix-foundation) ran a token holder consultation on repurposing the **2.4 billion XRD stablecoin reserve** — 1 billion to a points-based, multi-season incentives campaign, 1 billion to a Growth Fund for listings, bridges and ecosystem support, and 400 million held back “for potential extension or burn” ([Radix Blog, 9 May 2025](https://www.radixdlt.com/blog/token-holder-consultation-repurposing-the-stablecoin-reserve)).

Carried in the same proposal was a change to the emission schedule itself: **“shorten the emission schedule by 20 years, reducing the maximum supply by ~6 billion XRD”** — taking the eventual ceiling from roughly 24 billion to roughly 18 billion. The consultation ran from 9 to 19 May 2025 and the result was published the next day: **91% of weighted input in favour**, from more than 1.3 billion XRD of holdings across 1,180 accounts ([Radix Blog, 20 May 2025](https://www.radixdlt.com/blog/token-holder-consultation-result)).

The result post committed the Foundation to “finalizing the structure” of the campaign and the fund, with “more details on both… shared in the weeks ahead”. It set no date for the emission change and named no mechanism for it — and there is no obvious one to name. The ceiling is not a field on the XRD resource that can be edited: read on-ledger, XRD carries `supply_fixed: false` and no resource-level cap at all, so the 24 billion endpoint exists only as the point at which the protocol’s per-epoch emission is scheduled to stop (see [Radix Economic Model](/contents/tech/research/radix-economic-model)). Shortening it by twenty years means changing emission logic in a protocol update.

No such change has reached the ledger. The section below measures the twelve months that followed the vote and finds issuance running at the original schedule’s rate. The Foundation moved to maintenance mode in April 2026 without implementing it, which leaves the change to the incoming Radix DAO — an approved tokenomics decision that remains, a year on, a commitment rather than a rule.

## What the ledger shows a year on

The claim is checkable in two Gateway reads. Taking the XRD resource at the same clock time one year apart — epoch 228,366 (9 August 2025) and epoch 333,486 (9 August 2026), exactly **105,120 epochs** apart — gives the network’s actual issuance across the year following the vote.

| XRD issuance, 12 months to 9 August 2026 |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Gross minted** | 297,171,771.38 XRD |
| **Burned** | 2,600,620.27 XRD |
| **Net supply growth** | 294,571,151.12 XRD |
| **Supply at the reading** | 13,505,865,658.61 XRD |
| **Against the ~300M schedule** | 99.1% – the shortfall is emission never minted, forfeited by validators that missed rounds |

297.2 million XRD minted against a scheduled ~300 million is the original rate, not a rate cut by twenty years of shortening. The 0.9% gap is not policy either: it is the penalty described above, withheld from validators that missed proposals rather than paid out to them.

The difference the vote would make is therefore still entirely ahead. Carried forward at the measured net rate of ~294.6 million XRD a year, supply reaches **18 billion in roughly 15 years** and **24 billion in roughly 36 years** — the twenty-year gap the proposal described, intact and unlegislated. Anyone modelling XRD dilution should treat 24 billion as the schedule the protocol is actually running and 18 billion as an approved intention with no implementation behind it.

## External Links

- [What is the XRD token? – Radix Knowledge Base](https://www.radixdlt.com/articles-learn/what-is-the-xrd-token)
- [How XRD staking emissions rewards and validator fees are calculated](https://learn.radixdlt.com/article/how-xrd-staking-emissions-rewards-and-validator-fees-are-calculated-for-validators)
- [Validators – Radix Docs](https://docs.radixdlt.com/docs/validator)