BasedGiant

BasedGiant

Node provider pay is shrinking. ICP On-Chain Report, Week 2

Node providers were paid 24% less in August than in May. Four straight months of decline. But most of the ICP that wasn't minted is still owed, sitting in neurons waiting to be claimed.

BasedGiant's avatar
BasedGiant
Aug 16, 2026
∙ Paid

Last week I flagged a mint of 36,744 ICP on a Saturday and said I did not know what it was. This week I decided to pull a wider amount of data, and I found out it was the fifth one in a row.

That is the whole argument for looking at the same numbers every week. One week of data makes odd things look like accidents. Several weeks make them look like habits.

In other news, ICP is minting less tokens than it was three months ago, and the fall is steady enough to call it a trend. But most of the missing issuance is just sitting in a pile, waiting to be claimed.


Executive Summary

  • Cycle burn sits 19.5x below the Mission 70 target, up from 19.1x a week earlier;

  • Node provider payouts have fallen every month since May, down about 24%;

  • The network minted roughly 628,000 ICP and burned about 4,100;

  • Measured inflation over the past year is 3.4%, while over the past quarter it runs at 2.2%;

  • Unclaimed rewards sit at 95.7 million ICP, around 17% of all supply;

  • Compute rose 22.8%, a second straight weekly jump, while cycle burn fell;

  • Storage hit a 14-week low even as the network kept adding canisters;

  • Trading volume rose 41% and cleared its four-week average for the first time since June;

  • Six Saturdays in a row have carried mints above 25,000 ICP, against a normal Saturday near 9,700.


This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2026 BasedGiant · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start your SubstackGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture