27 Nov, 2025
2 minutes
Ethereum is the second most valuable cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization and is a base for decentralized financing and smart contracts. Founded in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin and a group of coders, Ethereum aims to be much more than a simple peer-to-peer exchange platform, in that with Ethereum, one can create dApps, tokens, and even smart contracts.
While Bitcoin is electronic gold, Ethereum represents a programmable blockchain, enabling innovation in everything from NFTs to sophisticated financial instruments. Its native currency, Ether (ETH), is used as a means of paying for network transactions, staking, and computational services on the Ethereum network.
Due to the fact that Ethereum's total coin supply is not fixed, the total supply of Ethereum coins fluctuates over a period of time because the issuance of ETH is dictated by dynamic mechanisms that were introduced together with Ethereum's proof-of-stake consensus algorithm.
This tutorial will show you how many Ethereum coins are out there, how the supply of Ethereum works, and what influences the total and circulating supply of Ethereum coins.
By 2025, the total circulating supply of the Ethereum coins stands at around 120 million, if statistics by on-chain and tracking platforms such as CoinMarketCap are anything to go by. The figure represents the total Ethereum coins available and in active circulation within the exchange platforms and smart contracts.
The entire supply of Ethereum is dynamic, unlike Bitcoin, meaning the total supply of Ethereum changes over time. This is because the total Ethereum supply shifts with the staking rewards and burning of fees associated with Ethereum transactions. Bitcoin has a fixed total supply of 21 million Bitcoin.
The London Hard Fork, or EIP-1559, launched in August 2021, is a significant change in Ethereum's monetary policy. This update included a 'burn' function that subtracted a certain part of ETH in every single transaction, thereby helping to balance out the effect of new ETH created for validators and making it a potentially 'deflationary' asset in times of high usage.
Since Ethereum's transition into Proof-of-Stake, also referred to as "The Merge" in 2022, block rewards have been replaced by validator rewards, bringing a much slower rate of new ETH being added to circulation. This coupled with the burn mechanism means a net decrease in the supply of ETH, where more is being 'burned' than being added amidst heavy network activity.
The circulating supply of Ethereum is a changing figure, propelled mainly by three different drivers:
Validator rewards (new ETH creation).
Burn of transaction cost: ETH removed.
Network activity levels affect both producing and burning.
This serves the Ethereum vision of a deflationary currency in the long run, since with increased use, the currency will become rarer.
Ethereum stands alone among other top cryptocurrencies in the fact that it doesn't have a fixed total supply built into its network. This means the total supply of Ethereum coins is theoretically unlimited, as opposed to many other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, for which 21 million BTC are written into code as a total supply cap.
At the time of Ethereum's launch in 2015, not having a supply cap was an explicit design choice. This is because the founders needed the flexibility of monetary policy to facilitate growth, staking, and thus the sustainability of the ecosystem. However, with the advent of EIP-1559 and Ethereum's shift to Proof-of-Stake, the direction of supply has been much more fine-tuned and at times even deflationary.
Lower Issuance Rate. Ethereum moved to Proof-of-Stake, and the emission of new coins per day is reduced by more than 90%. The validators earn lower rewards with Proof-of-Stake since increased gas fees lead to slower emission of new coins.
Fee Burning. Part of each transaction cost is burnt forever, and this continuously decreases the total amount of ETH in circulation. This will be a constant supply management tool that will be implemented, especially at times of peak network usage.
Deflationary Epoch. When the amount of ETH burnt is more than the amount of ETH created by staking rewards, the network changes into a deflationary period where the total supply decreases.
As of 2025, the total supply of Ethereum is about 120.2 million ETH, with slight changes every day due to the burn process and the rewards issued to the validators. While theoretically unlimited, owing to both the low rates and constant burning, the supply of Ethereum is ultimately capped and deflationary.
The coin supply of Ethereum is not pegged with a fixed issuance schedule because it's governed by an adaptive monetary rule, responsive to network activity. This helps Ethereum manage a delicate balancing act of incentives related to both inflation and deflation and network security.
Following the Merge, Ethereum transitioned from its energy-intensive mining to PoS validation. Validators have to stake a certain amount of ETH to start validating transactions and get a small reward for doing so. New ether is issued in the process, at a speed much lower compared to PoW.
Presently, a growth rate of 0.5% is needed to keep the network secure without flooding the market with too much supply.
Every Ethereum transaction has an associated base fee, which is 'burned' rather than being rewarded to the validators. The busier the network is, the more ETH that's being destroyed. When a network is very busy, such as at an NFT project launch, or a DeFi spike, the ETH can be considered a deflationary asset because the total supply actually reduces.
This combination of staking rewards and burn fees comprises what is referred to as Ethereum's elastic supply mechanism: when network usage is low, it grows; and when usage is high, it shrinks.
The net effect is a self-reinforcing environment with increasingly scarce Ethereum whose usage is positively correlated with a rise in its scarcity. This is a design both for establishing value for ETH and as a store of value asset akin to Bitcoin, except with additional versatility.
This ever-changing supply mechanism is a reflection of Ethereum's overall vision of achieving a sustained economic model within its decentralized economy. Here, user activity will help create a natural level of scarcity.
Ethereum's dynamic supply mechanism is one of the most complex economic frameworks in the crypto space. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, which follow fixed supply schedules and halving cycles, Ethereum's supply is governed by code and reflects a level of versatility according to changing demands and needs.
A combination of staking, burning, and smart contracts makes Ethereum's economy self-regulating based on the level of activity. As demand increases, so will ETH burned, which will drop supply levels and help maintain value levels. The burn level shall fall as demand drops; this will maintain the incentives for validators and ensure that the network security features remain intact.
This is what makes Ethereum both a blockchain network and a digital economic infrastructure with the potential for adaptation within the global setting. The more Ethereum is used for dApps, NFTs, and DeFi solutions, the rarer the ETH will be.
It should be since, after the Merge, for the most part, the ETH is actually being talked about as "ultrasound money" by Ethereum supporters. This is because the Ethereum supply can actually reduce over time, a property considered to be even stronger than Bitcoin's fixed supply. In this sense, ETH is both a store of value and a productive asset, since it can be used continually.
Going ahead, Ethereum's monetary policy will continue to evolve with the upgrades in the network like danksharding and proto-danksharding/EIP-4844 that should help with the scaling and cost reduction in transactions. This, in turn, can have further effects on the burn levels and staking, helping in defining the longer-term levels of inflation and deflation related to the coin.
The future supply of Ethereum is pegged neither to a fixed figure but rather on user activity and usefulness, an ideal which informs its decentralized, flexible, and sustainable digital economy characteristics.
Supply of Ethereum coins: As of 2025, the total circulating supply of Ethereum coins, denoted by ETH, is about 120 million. This is subject to continuous fluctuations based on the interplay of newly allocated validator rewards and the burn of the ETH used for network transactions.
There is no total supply of Ethereum in existence. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has no cap on supply. But with the Proof-of-Stake mechanism and the EIP 1559 burn mechanism in place, the net supply of Ethereum is remarkably low, even deflationary in some cases.
ETH is Newly minted ETH occurs through staking rewards. Validators lock a certain amount of ETH in order to secure the network and accrue some rewards for validating transactions and proposing blocks. This is what adds new ETH into circulation.
\Yes, when the network is in a high state of activity, the level of ETH being burned in terms of network fees can be higher than the newly created level of ETH used to pay the validators.
Today, Ethereum's supply is unlimited, even though its economic model provides a mechanism which reduces its supply in the form of network fees being burnt. This makes Ethereum's supply progressively rarer, thereby maintaining its value.
