Emissions

Emissions are how most blockchains pay the people who keep them running. Every block, the protocol mints new tokens and distributes them to validators, stakers, miners, or GPU suppliers, depending on what kind of work the network needs. Bitcoin pays miners for PoW security. NEAR and Ethereum pay stakers for PoS security. Bittensor, Render, and io.net pay GPU providers for compute. The recipients differ but the mechanism is the same: create tokens from nothing, hand them to people who contribute useful work.

This dilutes existing holders by definition. If the network mints 5% new supply per year, every existing token owner holds 5% less of the total supply than they did 12 months ago (unless they also participated and earned some of the new issuance). That’s the dilution tax: you pay it whether you realise it or not, and it’s the price of bootstrapping a network that doesn’t yet generate enough real revenue to pay its workers from fees.

The direction of travel matters more than the current rate. A network that emits 10% per year but is cutting toward 2% is fundamentally different from one stuck at 10% with no reduction schedule. NEAR’s October 2025 halving is a good example: cut from 5% to 2.5%, combined with revenue buybacks from Intents fees, it moves the network toward a potential net-deflationary position even though issuance hasn’t stopped.

The honest read on any DeAI project requires checking whether emissions are declining, whether they’re offset by burns or fee capture, and whether the network has a credible path from emission-funded security to fee-funded security. Networks that never make that transition are permanent dilution machines, which is fine for speculators willing to trade out but bad for anyone expecting to hold long-term. The OYM Supply Dynamics dimension of the Returns Score captures this tension directly.