New QRL doesn't appear from nowhere — on QRL Legacy it's created as block rewards paid to miners. This guide explains how that issuance works and why it slows down over time.
The coinbase: minting new coins
Every block a miner produces includes a special transaction called the coinbase. Unlike an ordinary transfer, it has no sender — it simply creates new QRL and pays it to the miner as a reward for the work of producing the block.
The coinbase is the only way new coins enter circulation under Proof-of-Work. It's also the incentive that keeps miners participating: solve the puzzle, add the block, collect freshly minted QRL plus the fees from the transactions you included.
Decaying emission
QRL Legacy doesn't pay a flat reward forever. It uses a decaying emission schedule: rewards start higher and shrink over time, so the total supply rises quickly at first and then ever more slowly as it approaches the 105 million cap.
The logic behind a decaying schedule is familiar from many chains:
- Front-load incentives when the network is young and most needs miners, and
- Taper inflation as the chain matures, protecting long-term holders from endless dilution.
The exact curve has been adjusted by community governance over QRL's history, but the shape — high early, declining toward the cap — is the constant.
Genesis isn't a block reward
A subtle but important point for reading supply data: QRL's genesis allocation (~65 million, from the 2018 token migration) is not a mining reward. It's the chain's starting balance, recorded at block zero. Only the emission after genesis comes from coinbase rewards. Conflating the two would make the supply look far larger than it is — which is exactly why this explorer counts genesis separately from the mining timeline.
QRL 2.0: rewards without mining
QRL 2.0 has no coinbase mining reward. Being Proof-of-Stake, it pays validators through staking rewards delivered as withdrawals. The principle — new issuance as a reward for securing the chain — is the same; the mechanism is entirely different.
Where to go next
- QRL tokenomics and supply — the full supply picture.
- QRandomX mining — how the work that earns rewards is done.
- Withdrawals explained — QRL 2.0's reward mechanism.