What is Monero's tail emission?
Monero’s tail emission is the ongoing supply of new XMR paid to miners after its main coin release finished. Since around June 2022, its base mining reward has been 0.6 XMR per block, with no scheduled end. This means Monero has no fixed maximum supply, but its percentage rate of supply growth falls over time.
How tail emission works
Mining is the work computers do to check transactions and help protect Monero’s shared transaction record, called the blockchain. When a miner produces an accepted block—a new group of transactions—they earn newly created XMR plus transaction fees.
Monero’s early mining rewards gradually decreased. Once roughly 18.13 million XMR had been issued through that main release, tail emission replaced the shrinking reward with a lasting base reward.
With a block arriving about every two minutes, that works out to roughly:
- 0.6 XMR per block
- 0.3 XMR per minute
- 432 XMR per day
- 157,680 XMR per 365-day year
These are expected amounts, not a precise timetable. Blocks can arrive sooner or later. Monero adjusts mining difficulty—the measure of how hard it is to find a valid block—every block to keep the average near two minutes.
Why keep creating coins?
The main reason is to keep giving miners a predictable source of payment for protecting the network.
Mining costs money through electricity and equipment. Without newly created coins, miners would need to depend entirely on transaction fees. Those fees can vary with demand.
Tail emission means Monero does not need transaction fees alone to fund mining. Fees still add to miners’ income, but an ongoing base reward remains.
That is a design choice, not a guarantee of perfect security. The protection miners provide still depends on factors such as XMR’s market value, mining costs, and how much computing power participates.
Does this mean unlimited inflation?
Monero’s supply can grow without a fixed upper limit. But an unlimited total supply is not the same as an ever-increasing inflation rate.
Here, “supply inflation” means the percentage increase in the number of coins. Tail emission adds roughly the same number of XMR each year to an increasingly large total.
For a simple illustration:
- Adding about 157,680 XMR to 20 million XMR increases supply by roughly 0.79%.
- Adding the same amount to 30 million XMR increases supply by roughly 0.53%.
These are examples, not claims about today’s supply. The percentage approaches zero over time, though issuance never stops under the current rules.
Supply growth also does not tell you how XMR’s price will move. Demand and wider market conditions matter too.
What it means for you
If you hold XMR, tail emission does not remove coins from your wallet. Your balance stays the same, but your share of the total supply gradually becomes smaller unless you acquire more.
If you mine, 0.6 XMR is the base reward for an entire block, not a guaranteed payout to your device. Your earnings depend on your computing contribution, competition, fees, and operating costs. Browser mining does not change those rules.
The bottom line
Tail emission trades a fixed supply cap for a lasting mining reward. You get predictable ongoing coin creation, a declining percentage growth rate, and a network designed to keep paying miners without relying only on transaction fees.
