Comparison
Ownership Share Across Token Growth and Supply Growth: Where a Share Holds Level, and Where Subtraction Misstates It
Across combinations of fee-adjusted token growth and total token-supply growth over the same period, how does a relative ownership share actually change, where does it hold level, and when does subtracting one rate from the other misstate or mis-rank the result?
The short answer
A share of the supply changes by the token factor divided by the supply factor. Token growth of 10% against supply growth of 5% leaves a share 4.76% higher — not the 5 percentage points the subtraction suggests. Where the two growths are equal, the share is unchanged, whatever the two rates are.
The subtraction is not merely imprecise. It overstates the change by exactly the supply factor — 1.40× at 40% supply growth, and the same factor at every token growth in that column — and because that divisor differs between scenarios, it can rank two of them the wrong way round. These are outputs of a model, not forecasts, and a share of a token count is not a money value.
- Who it applies to
- A fixed reference set of token-growth and supply-growth combinations over one shared horizon. It compares two rates against each other, not tokens, networks, validators or platforms — none of which is named anywhere on this page.
- What this does not tell you
- It does not describe what any supply will do, what any rate is, or what any token is worth. A share of a token count is not money, and this page computes only the first.
Model Staking Yield after Fees and Token Dilution v1.0, from the same calculation the Staking Yield after Fees and Token Dilution Calculator runs.
What is being compared
One question is asked of every combination in the same way, so the combinations can be read against each other rather than one at a time. Nothing varies between rows except what the staked balance did, and nothing varies between columns except what the total supply did underneath it.
| Token growth compared | 0% · 5% · 10% · 20% · 40%, after all modelled reward fees |
|---|---|
| Total-supply growth compared | -5% · 0% · 5% · 10% · 20% · 40%, net of any burn |
| Horizon | One period, the same for both figures in every cell. Nothing on this page compares a growth measured over one length against a growth measured over another |
| What token growth means | What the staked balance did over the period, after every fee the reader would model. How it got there — APR, APY, restaking frequency, validator commission — is the calculator’s subject and changes nothing here |
| What supply growth means | What the total number of tokens did over the same period, set by protocol rules rather than by anything the holder did |
| Reward fees | Already inside the token-growth figure. No separate fee is deducted anywhere on this page |
| Units | Percentages of a token count throughout. No currency, price, market value, tax or purchasing power is modelled |
The growth rates are illustrative: numbers spaced so the arithmetic is legible across the table, not rates anybody has offered, forecasts of any supply schedule, or claims about what any network does. UBWHY publishes no staking rate, no supply figure and no token name anywhere, and this table is not one. No row here is described or implied to be attractive, normal, sustainable or achievable, and the calculator these figures come from deliberately prefills nothing and fetches nothing.
The relationship, written once
The calculator divides the fee-adjusted token factor by the total-supply factor. Every figure on this page is that same division:
share change = (1 + token growth) ÷ (1 + supply growth) − 1
Token growth is what the staked balance did over the period, after every reward fee the reader would model. Supply growth is what the total number of tokens did over the same period. A share is a ratio, so when both the numerator and the denominator move, the new ratio is divided by the old one.
Because both inputs are rates rather than amounts, the size of the holding drops out entirely. Someone with a thousand times the balance, on the same two rates, sits on exactly the same cell. That is what makes a table of thirty cells a reference rather than thirty worked examples.
The share change each combination produces
Read a row to see what a faster-growing supply does to one rate of token growth, and a column to see what a larger staking result does against one supply schedule. The cells marked unchanged are where the two growths are equal, and they run diagonally across the table rather than sitting at any particular rate.
| Token growth | -5% supply | 0% supply | 5% supply | 10% supply | 20% supply | 40% supply |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0% | 5.26% | unchanged | -4.76% | -9.09% | -16.67% | -28.57% |
| 5% | 10.53% | 5.00% | unchanged | -4.55% | -12.50% | -25.00% |
| 10% | 15.79% | 10.00% | 4.76% | unchanged | -8.33% | -21.43% |
| 20% | 26.32% | 20.00% | 14.29% | 9.09% | unchanged | -14.29% |
| 40% | 47.37% | 40.00% | 33.33% | 27.27% | 16.67% | unchanged |
The two halves of the table are not mirror images, and that is the structure rather than an artefact of the rates chosen. 40% token growth against a flat supply gives 40.00%; the same 40 percentage points gap the other way round — no token growth against 40% supply growth — gives -28.57%, not the same figure with a minus sign. The denominator is what breaks the symmetry.
Where a share holds level
The unchanged cells are not small changes rounded to nothing. They are a different model state, and the model reports them as exactly zero rather than as a figure that happens to be near it.
- Share growing — token growth above supply growth
- The balance outgrows the supply, so the holder ends the period with a larger fraction of a larger total. Every cell above the diagonal is this state. It is not a profit: the fraction grew, and what the tokens are worth is a question this arithmetic never touches.
- Share unchanged — token growth equal to supply growth
- The balance and the supply grow at the same proportional rate over the same period, so the fraction is exactly what it was. At 0% against 0% the published cell reads unchanged, and so does every other cell on the diagonal, at every rate. This is a boundary between two numbers, not a rate to aim for. It is not a required return, not a yield any protocol has offered or could offer, and not a measure of whether staking was worthwhile.
- Share shrinking — token growth below supply growth
- The supply outgrows the balance, so the holder ends the period with more tokens and a smaller fraction of them. Every cell below the diagonal is this state, including every cell in the 40% column. It is not a loss in money terms, and nothing here says the tokens are worth less than they were.
The diagonal moves with the supply growth rather than sitting at any particular rate, which is why no number on this page is a target. A staking result that holds a share level against one supply schedule loses share against a faster one and gains against a slower one, and the model has no view about which schedule is likely.
Why subtracting the two rates gives a different answer
The common shortcut is to subtract: token growth minus supply growth. It is not the calculation, and the size of the difference is exact rather than vague.
token growth − supply growth = share change × (1 + supply growth)
Both forms share the same numerator. The model divides it by the supply factor and the shortcut does not, so the shortcut is the answer multiplied by that factor. Two consequences follow, and the second is the one that is easy to miss:
- The distortion depends on the supply growth alone. It is the same factor at every token growth in a column, and the same factor whether the gap between the two rates is large or small. It is invariant in everything except the denominator.
- The direction is not always the same. Above zero supply growth the shortcut overstates the change in whichever direction it points. Below zero — where a supply is contracting — the factor is less than one, and the shortcut understates it instead.
| Supply growth | Shortcut is out by | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| -5% | 0.95× | understates the change |
| 0% | 1.00× | exact — the two forms agree |
| 5% | 1.05× | overstates the change |
| 10% | 1.10× | overstates the change |
| 20% | 1.20× | overstates the change |
| 40% | 1.40× | overstates the change |
At 0% supply growth the factor is 1.00× and the two forms agree exactly — which is why the shortcut survives: it is not an approximation there, it is right. At -5% the factor is 0.95× and the shortcut understates the change instead. At 40% it is 1.40×: the worst published cell is 0% token growth against 40% supply growth, where the shortcut reads -40.00 percentage points and the model gives -28.57%.
Stated carefully, because the loose version is wrong: the shortcut is not "off by 1.40×" in percentage points. It equals the model's own share change multiplied by 1.40× in that column, so the gap between them — measured in percentage points — is largest where the share change itself is largest, and vanishes at the diagonal where both forms are zero.
When the shortcut ranks two scenarios the wrong way round
A shortcut that is merely imprecise is survivable when it is used to describe one scenario. It is not survivable when it is used to put two scenarios in order, because the factor it is out by is different for each of them.
| Scenario | Token growth | Supply growth | Subtraction says | The model says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scenario A | 35% | 25% | 10.00% | 8.00% |
| Scenario B | 9% | 0% | 9.00% | 9.00% |
The subtraction ranks scenario A ahead. The model ranks scenario B ahead. Both cannot be the ordering, and the model's is the one the arithmetic supports.
The reason is the denominator and nothing else. Scenario B sits at 0% supply growth, where the shortcut is not an approximation but exactly right. Scenario A sits at 25%, where the same numerator is divided by a larger factor before it becomes a share change. Subtracting compares the two numerators and never reaches the divisors, so the scenario with the faster-growing supply keeps credit the division takes back.
This is an ordering of two sets of arithmetic and nothing more. Neither scenario is better, more attractive, more likely or more sustainable than the other, and neither describes anything anybody is offering.
One token growth, read across the supply growths
Take the 10% row and read it left to right. The staking result does not move; only what the supply did underneath it does, and every figure below comes out of the same model run the tables above are built from.
- -5% supply growth. A 15.79% change in the share of the supply, against a subtraction that would have said 15.00 percentage points.
- 0% supply growth. A 10.00% change in the share of the supply, against a subtraction that would have said 10.00 percentage points.
- 5% supply growth. A 4.76% change in the share of the supply, against a subtraction that would have said 5.00 percentage points.
- 10% supply growth. The share is unchanged. The balance and the supply grew at the same rate over the same period, so the fraction is exactly what it was.
- 20% supply growth. A -8.33% change in the share of the supply, against a subtraction that would have said -10.00 percentage points.
- 40% supply growth. A -21.43% change in the share of the supply, against a subtraction that would have said -30.00 percentage points.
One unchanged staking result spans a 15.79% gain at one end of the row and a -21.43% change at the other. The rate the holder was shown never moved. Everything that changed is the figure the staking page was not reporting.
A larger share of a supply is not more money
Every figure on this page is a change in a share of a token count. It is not a money value, not purchasing power, not governance weight and not a claim on protocol revenue. A share can rise while the price falls far enough to leave the holder worse off in every currency, and fall while the price rises enough to leave them better off. The two are separate lenses, and adding them together produces a number that answers neither.
Supply growth is not evidence about price in either direction, and nothing on this page forecasts one. A larger supply does not require a lower price and a contracting one does not create demand. Token-supply dilution is also not consumer-price inflation: they share a word and nothing else, and the calculation for the second is adifferent one with a different input.
None of this is financial, legal or tax advice. No token, network, validator, platform or provider is named, ranked or recommended anywhere on this page, and none of these rows is an opportunity.
This page belongs to a wider subject. Explore the Staking and dilution topic to see which UBWHY asset answers which question.
What this reference does not determine
The figures on this page are outputs of a UBWHY calculation model applied to the assumptions stated above. They are not data about any network, a market observation, a probability, or a forecast. The reference cannot determine:
- what any token, network, validator or platform pays, none of which is named anywhere here
- what any total supply will actually do, which is a protocol question and not an arithmetic one
- whether a growing share of a supply is worth more money than a shrinking one
- what a token is worth, in any currency, at any time
- whether supply growth moves a price in either direction, which the arithmetic cannot see
- whether any staking arrangement is worthwhile, sustainable, safe or available
- slashing, counterparty failure, contract risk and lock-up terms, none of which is a percentage
- governance weight, protocol revenue or any claim on either
- consumer-price inflation, which shares a word with dilution and nothing else
- tax of any kind, in any jurisdiction, at any moment of receipt
- whether anything above is appropriate for any particular person
The model holds both rates constant for the whole period. Real reward rates move with participation, emissions schedules and governance decisions, and real supply schedules change; a scenario at a constant rate is a scenario rather than a projection. Every figure is before tax, and tax on staking rewards differs sharply between jurisdictions, often at the moment of receipt.
Where these figures come from
Every number above is produced by Staking Yield after Fees and Token Dilution v1.0, the same calculation model behind the Staking Yield after Fees and Token Dilution Calculator, run at build time over the reference set. Nothing on this page is typed by hand, and no second formula was written to produce it. The subtraction column is the one exception and it is not a model output: the model deliberately does not contain the subtraction form at all, so the shortcut is assembled from two of the model's own figures and is only ever shown against the answer.
Three published cells are additionally reproduced by the model's own verified test cases. SY-5 is 0% token growth against -5% supply growth and returns 5.26%; SY-6 is 10% against 5% and returns 4.76%; and SY-7 is a 100% reward fee — leaving0% token growth — against 0% supply growth, which is a unchanged cell. All three are recalculated independently on every build. The remaining figures are pinned by exact regression tests against the same model, including the property the distortion table rests on: that the factor is the model's own supply factor and holds at every token growth in its column.