GRT Issuance & Flow

A live trace of GRT supply, issuance, and burns across Ethereum mainnet and Arbitrum One. Net supply = issuance − burns: linear per-block minting through the RewardsManager funds indexing rewards, while query-fee, curation and delegation taxes (plus slashing) burn GRT. Figures are sourced live from the graph-network-arbitrum GraphNetwork entity.

Global GRT SupplyTotal GRT across Ethereum L1 and Arbitrum L2, de-double-counted for the bridge escrow. On-chain reads were unavailable, so this is the ~11.5B circulating-supply approximation.

Annual IssuancelivePer-block protocol issuance annualised over the global GRT supply (L1 + L2 − bridge escrow). This is the basis Messari / Graph Explorer use, so it is directly comparable to the ~2.8% they report.

L2 Net SupplyThe network subgraph's totalSupply: GRT minted minus burned on Arbitrum (net tokens present on L2). A subset of global supply, shown here as the L2 footprint, NOT the issuance denominator.

Protocol issuance / block

Cumulative Indexing Rewards

Cumulative Query Fees

Issuance & Burn Flow

Conceptual map of where GRT comes from and where it goes. Sources mint into the supply pool; burns remove it. Indexing rewards are split between indexers' self-stake and their delegators.

Sources

Genesis mint (2020)

10.00B GRT

one-time, Ethereum L1

Protocol issuance

—

linear per-block

Supply pool

L2 Net Supply (mint−burn)

—

Signalled (curation)

—

directs reward split

Distribution & sinks

Indexing rewards → indexers + delegators

—

Burned

—

query-fee / curation / delegation tax + slashing

Supply Composition

Global supply (L1 + L2 − escrow)0.00 GRT

L1 GraphToken total (incl. escrow)0.00 GRT

L2GraphToken total0.00 GRT

Bridge escrow (locked on L1)0.00 GRT

Global supply is the L1 GraphToken total plus the L2GraphToken total minus the GRT locked in the L1 bridge escrow, which backs the bridged L2 tokens, so it is subtracted to avoid double-counting. Genesis was a fixed 10.00B mint on Ethereum L1 (2020); the rest is net protocol issuance since.

Gross On-Chain Mint / Burn

incl. bridge

Cumulative Minted

—

Cumulative Burned

—

On Arbitrum, gross mint/burn is dominated by bridge flows, every L2 deposit mints and every withdrawal burns. These are not a clean issuance/burn measure; use cumulative indexing rewards and the per-block rate for issuance.

Annualized Issuance Rate

Reported quarterly by Messari / Graph Explorer, against the ~11.5B circulating supply.

2.76%

Q4 2024

2.84%

Q1 2025

1.05%

Q2 2025

2.79%

Q3 2025

2.77%

Q4 2025

These use the global circulating supply as denominator, the same basis as the live — stat above (~317M GRT/yr over ~11.5B global supply), so the figures are directly comparable.

How GRT issuance works

Linear per-block minting, curation-weighted reward split, tax burns

GRT is an uncapped ERC-20, minted at genesis as 10B tokens on Ethereum and now canonically the L2GraphToken on Arbitrum One. The RewardsManager mints indexing rewards on reward collection (graphToken().mint(staking, rewards)), emitting RewardsAssigned. GIP-0037 replaced the original ~3% compounding model with a linear issuancePerBlock.

Rewards split across subgraphs in proportion to curation signal, then to indexers by allocated stake, then between indexer self-stake and delegators via the per-indexer reward cut. Curators earn a fixed 10% of query fees on their subgraphs. Delegation is capped at the network delegation ratio (16×) of an indexer's self-stake.

Deflationary sinks: the 1% query-fee protocol tax, 1% curation tax, 0.5% delegation tax, rejected-dispute deposits, and slashing of malicious indexers, all burned via the ERC20Burnable _burn.

Contract reference

Canonical addresses across L1, L2 and Horizon

Arbitrum One

Principal deployment: 100% of indexing-reward issuance since 28 Jun 2024

Contract	Address	Note
L2GraphToken (proxy)	0x9623063377AD1B27544C965cCd7342f7EA7e88C7	impl 0xaffcb9…b28df
RewardsManager	0x971B9d3d0Ae3ECa029CAB5eA1fB0F72c85e6a525	mints indexing rewards
L2Staking / HorizonStaking	0x00669A4CF01450B64E8A2A20E9b1FCB71E61eF03
L2Curation	0x22d78fb4bc72e191C765807f8891B5e1785C8014
EpochManager	0x5A843145c43d328B9bB7a4401d94918f131bB281
L2GNS	0xec9A7fb6CbC2E41926127929c2dcE6e9c5D33Bec
DisputeManager	0x0Ab2B043138352413Bb02e67E626a70320E3BD46
L2GraphTokenGateway	0x65E1a5e8946e7E87d9774f5288f41c30a99fD302	mints/burns on bridge
Controller	0x0a8491544221dd212964fbb96487467291b2C97e

Ethereum Mainnet (L1)

Deprecated for rewards (Dec 2024); still holds GRT, bridge & escrow remain live

Contract	Address	Note
GraphToken	0xc944E90C64B2c07662A292be6244BDf05Cda44a7	genesis 10B, verified 2020-12-14
RewardsManager	0x9Ac758AB77733b4150A901ebd659cbF8cB93ED66
L1Staking	0xF55041E37E12cD407ad00CE2910B8269B01263b9
Curation	0x8FE00a685Bcb3B2cc296ff6FfEaB10acA4CE1538
BridgeEscrow	0x36aFF7001294daE4C2ED4fDEfC478a00De77F090	locks L1 GRT backing L2
L1GraphTokenGateway	0x01cDC91B0A9bA741903aA3699BF4CE31d6C5cC06	minter, bounded by L2 mint allowance

Horizon (Arbitrum One)

Mainnet-live 2 Dec 2025; relocates allocations & payments, issuance formula unchanged

Contract	Address	Note
HorizonStaking	0x00669A4CF01450B64E8A2A20E9b1FCB71E61eF03	L2Staking upgraded/renamed
SubgraphService	0xb2Bb92d0DE618878E438b55D5846cfecD9301105	first data service
GraphTallyCollector	0x8f69F5C07477Ac46FBc491B1E6D91E2be0111A9e	TAPv2 verifier, name-verify on Arbiscan
PaymentsEscrow	0x8f477709eF277d4A880801D01A140a9CF88bA0d3	TAP escrow, name-verify on Arbiscan

L2 migration timeline

Genesis → 100% rewards on Arbitrum → Horizon

Dec 2020Mainnet launch
10B GRT genesis on Ethereum; ~3% compounding issuance via RewardsManager.
Jun 2022Migration announced
Graph Day: full migration to Arbitrum One announced (GIP-0031 bridge).
GIP-0037Linear L2 issuance
issuanceRate replaced by linear issuancePerBlock; native L2 minting + L2 Mint Allowance protection.
Sep 202350% rewards on L2
GIP-0052 staged the L2 reward share 5% → 25% → 50%.
28 Jun 2024100% rewards on L2
L1 issuancePerBlock reduced to zero; all indexing rewards now issued on Arbitrum.
Dec 2024L1 deprecated
GIP-0067 completed: mainnet protocol deprecated (not destroyed; token & bridge persist).
2 Dec 2025Horizon live
GIP-0066 on Arbitrum mainnet: HorizonStaking, SubgraphService, generalized payments layer.

Key GIPs

Governance proposals shaping issuance & flow

GIP-0031Arbitrum GRT bridge (lock-and-mint, BridgeEscrow)

GIP-0037L2 linear rewards + L2 Mint Allowance

GIP-0040Protocol deployment to Arbitrum One

GIP-0052Staged L2 reward share 5% → 100%

GIP-0067Deprecation of the L1 protocol

GIP-0066Graph Horizon

GIP-0070Horizon-era issuance/curation redesign

GIP-0087/0088On-chain indexing agreements + Issuance Allocator

GIP-0089Innovation Allocation (20% of issuance)

Caveats

What the numbers do and don't mean

▸“Total supply” is reported inconsistently across sources: retail aggregators show circulating supply (~10.8B), the Graph Explorer shows on-chain token supply (~11.47B), and “minted” (~15.1B) is gross cumulative issuance including the 10B genesis.
▸On the Arbitrum subgraph, gross Minted/Burned are dominated by bridge flows (every L2 deposit mints, every withdrawal burns), so they are NOT a clean issuance/burn measure. Cumulative indexing rewards and the per-block issuance rate are the honest issuance figures.
▸Realized burn has historically run well below the ~1%/yr design target, because query-fee and curation activity were low relative to issuance, so net inflation tracks close to gross issuance.
▸A complete supply trace must still read L1 totalSupply and the BridgeEscrow balance: the L1 protocol is deprecated, not destroyed.
▸GIP-0089 (1 Sep 2026) sends 20% of issuance to the Innovation Allocation. Protocol-total issuance is still 120.73 GRT/block; indexing rewards are the RewardsManager's 96.584. Instant APR uses the latter.

Live aggregates from the graph-network-arbitrum GraphNetwork entity, cached 30 minutes. Issuance rate is derived as per-block issuance × L1-equivalent blocks/yr ÷ global GRT supply, where global supply is read on-chain as L1 + L2 totalSupply minus the bridge-escrow balance. Reference contracts, timeline and GIPs are static; verify Horizon payment-contract names on Arbiscan before relying on them.