Guide · checked against its sources on 2026-10-24
New NAM is minted by the protocol for three things: staking rewards, public goods funding and shielded rewards, and each adds to the supply. Governance sets the public goods rate directly, and the caps and targets of the controllers that set the staking and shielded reward rates each epoch.[1][2][3]
Namada's mainnet started with 1,000,000,000 NAM in its genesis balances file, a total namada.net's genesis post had proposed with no lockups.[4][5]
The mainnet genesis balances file, published in Namada's GitHub organisation, gives out 1,000,000,000 NAM in all, and the chain started from it on 3 December 2024 at 15:00 UTC.[4][6][7]
Before launch, namada.net's genesis post proposed that total with no lockups and set out the groups it would be allocated to.[5]
NAM could not be transferred at first: the genesis settings made it non-transferable until the launch's last phase, and namada.net's post of 20 June 2025 announced that full transferability of NAM was enabled and the launch complete.[8][9]
Each epoch the protocol mints staking rewards for the validators in the consensus set, with extra for proposing and voting on blocks; each validator's rewards are shared with its delegators by stake, after the validator's commission.[10][11][12]
The amount follows a controller that aims at a target share of all NAM being staked: when less is staked than the target, the rate rises to draw more stake, up to a maximum rate. The target and the maximum are settings governance can change.[1][5][13]
Public goods funding regularly mints NAM into an on-chain account, at a rate governance sets, to pay for public goods; stewards elected by governance help direct it and receive a share of inflation themselves.[2][5]
Namada also mints NAM to reward people who keep eligible assets in the shielded pool: the minted NAM is held in a shielded rewards pool and paid out per asset by controllers aiming at target amounts that governance configures.[3]
No. In the genesis settings the staking, public goods and steward inflation rates were all zero, and namada.net's launch post said staking rewards and public goods funding would start in the second phase and shielded rewards in the fourth.[8][7]
Because governance sets these settings and the controllers move the rates every epoch, the rates in force are read from the chain, not from a document. This site shows the staking rate the network's indexer reports, with the time it was read.[1][3]
Transaction fees are not destroyed: Namada's fee rules pay every fee to the validator that proposed the block.[14]
The deposit locked with a governance proposal is returned to its author if the proposal passes and burned if it is rejected, according to Namada's specs and code.[15][16]
Slashed NAM is not destroyed for now: namada.net's proof-of-stake post says slashed tokens stay in the proof-of-stake account on mainnet, and that a future upgrade may move them to a slash pool; Namada's specs describe that pool, from which governance could refund validators or burn the tokens.[13][17]
It changes as rewards are minted each epoch, so it is not typed here: this site's home page shows all NAM in existence, read from Namada nodes with its time.[10]
namada.net's genesis post proposed the genesis supply with no lockups. At launch the genesis settings made NAM non-transferable; namada.net's post of 20 June 2025 announced that full transferability was enabled and the launch complete.[5][8][9]
Governance. The staking rate's cap and target, the public goods rates and each asset's shielded reward settings are all parameters that NAM stakers can change by vote.[1][2][18][19]
To the validator that proposed the block, in whichever accepted token the fee was paid; fees are not shared among the other validators.[14]
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