APENFT Tokenomics Explained: Supply, Allocation and Burns

APENFT Asia editorial team · Fact-checked against official sources

APENFT tokenomics at a glance

Tokenomics is the part of a crypto project that never shows up in a marketing video but determines almost everything about how a token behaves: how much exists, who got it, when it reached the market and what pulls supply out of circulation. For APENFT, now operating as AINFT, the story is unusually simple. The supply is huge, it is fully unlocked, and burns have so far been small relative to the total.

These figures come from three independent places: the token contract as read by Tronscan, CoinGecko’s supply data and the AINFT white paper v2.0. They agree with one another, which is reassuring. The circulating supply equals the maximum supply minus the balance of the burn address, exactly.

The rest of this page explains each number, the allocation behind it and how to check it yourself. For live price and market cap, use the APENFT price page.

Total supply and circulating supply of APENFT

The TRON contract was deployed on 13 May 2021 with a total supply of 999,990,000,000,000 NFT. That figure is fixed. The white paper does not describe any minting function or inflation schedule, and the total has not changed since launch.

Circulating supply is lower because some tokens have been sent to the TRON black hole address T9yD14Nj9j7xAB4dbGeiX9h8unkKLxmGkn, a well-known address from which nothing can ever be withdrawn. Tokens sent there are effectively destroyed. At the time of writing that address held 9,884,332,743,608 NFT, leaving roughly 990,105,592,982,875 in circulation.

Why the supply is so large

A supply of nearly one quadrillion was a deliberate choice, common among TRON-era tokens. It allowed the project to airdrop meaningful-looking amounts to millions of holders and keeps unit prices tiny. The trade-off is that every price move needs a large amount of money. At $0.000001 per token, for example, the market cap would be about $990 million. We walk through the full maths in our APENFT price prediction, including why one cent and one dollar targets are unrealistic.

How the NFT supply was allocated

The white paper sets out the original distribution of the 999.99 trillion tokens. The token counts below are simple calculations from those percentages.

Half of the supply was earmarked for the art side of the project: artist partners and the purchase of works. That reflects the original mission of putting world-class art on the blockchain. The team share of 19% is substantial, and like everything else it is fully unlocked.

The airdrop share in practice

The monthly airdrop is the most visible part of the DeFi allocation. After the first month, the program distributed 1,666,650,000,000 NFT per month for 24 months, about 40 trillion tokens or roughly 4% of supply. Some secondary sources say about 1% of supply went out in the first month, but that figure is not confirmed in a primary source. Either way, the documented airdrops account for only part of the 19% DeFi allocation. How the rest of that bucket was used, for example in mining campaigns on SunSwap, JustLend and SUN.io, is not broken down publicly. The white paper simply marks airdrops and mining as “concluded”.

If you received NFT through that program, our guide to the APENFT airdrop on Binance explains why the tokens appeared and what you can do with them.

Unlocks and vesting: nothing left to release

A common worry with any token is an upcoming unlock that floods the market. With APENFT, that risk is behind it. The white paper states that all NFT tokens were fully unlocked as of 1 May 2023, and the airdrop program ended with the last scheduled snapshot in June 2023.

That has two consequences. On the positive side, there is no hidden supply waiting to be released, and the circulating figure is about as high as it can get. On the other side, the token lacks the “supply shock” narrative that some projects use, and any holder who received tokens for free, including the team and early recipients, has been free to sell for years.

APENFT burns: what has been destroyed and why

Burning is the only mechanism that reduces APENFT supply. Here is what is documented.

Two observations follow. First, the total burned so far is under 1% of supply, so burns have not changed the overall picture. Second, the most credible burn mechanism is one funded by real revenue, such as launchpad or product fees, because it ties token demand to actual usage. Whether NFT Pump fees produce material burns over time is something you can check yourself: the black hole address balance on Tronscan is public.

Contract addresses on TRON, BNB Chain, Ethereum and BTTC

APENFT is native to TRON, and that is the contract we recommend using. Versions exist on other chains, but they are less transparent.

TRON (TRC-20), official

TFczxzPhnThNSqr5by8tvxsdCFRRz6cPNq

TRON issuer

TRX6Q82wMqWNbCCiLqejbZe43wk1h1zJHm

BNB Chain (CoinGecko)

0x20ee7b720f4e4c4ffcb00c4065cdae55271aecca

BNB Chain (BscScan label)

0x1fc9004ec7e5722891f5f38bae7678efcb11d34d

Ethereum (CoinGecko, CMC)

0x198d14f2ad9ce69e76ea330b374de4957c3f850a

Ethereum (second contract)

0xEF40B859D21e4d566a3d713e756197c021BffaAa

BTTC, BSC-mapped (NFT_b)

0x01910c7821f7652fedeb21334A9e256059084579

BTTC, ETH-mapped (NFT_e)

0x0E0c0f3df7F7989272e63a459483dd86C4A9a943

The supplies on BNB Chain and Ethereum are tiny next to the TRON total, which fits the idea that they are bridged or wrapped representations rather than separate issues. Neither AINFT nor the white paper clarifies which BNB Chain or Ethereum contract is the canonical one, so we cannot confirm it. If you need to use another chain, our APENFT multichain guide explains bridges, MetaMask setup and how to avoid sending tokens to the wrong network.

Decimals, units and the smallest amount

The NFT token uses 6 decimals on every chain listed above. That means the smallest indivisible unit is 0.000001 NFT, and a wallet stores balances as whole numbers of those micro-units. You need the decimals value when you add the token manually to a wallet such as TronLink or Trust Wallet: enter the wrong number and your balance will display incorrectly, although the tokens themselves are unaffected.

Step-by-step screenshots for specific wallets are in our TronLink guide and the Trust Wallet guide.

Token utility: what NFT is actually used for

A token’s supply matters less if nobody needs it. So what does NFT do?

• Governance. The white paper states that AINFT “exclusively uses NFT as its official governance token” and says that staking NFT in the AINFT Foundation grants voting rights. A live staking product for this was not verified at the time of writing.
• DeFi collateral and lending. JustLend DAO runs a jNFT market where NFT can be supplied or used as collateral, with a 60% collateral factor and a 20% reserve factor.
• Liquidity provision. SunSwap has NFT/USDT and NFT/TRX pools, and JustMoney has an NFT/WTRX pool.
• Ecosystem products. NFT Pump fees are linked to buybacks and burns, and the planned AI products, such as the Agent Framework and Nova, may create new uses if they launch. Those launches were not confirmed as of early 2026.

Utility is the weak spot in APENFT’s tokenomics. The supply side is clear and transparent; the demand side depends largely on products that are still to come. Our APENFT staking guide covers what yield options exist today.

Holder distribution and concentration

About 2.15 million TRON addresses hold NFT, a large number thanks to years of airdrops. Ownership is still concentrated at the top. The largest holders on Tronscan include an unlabeled address with around 48.4 trillion NFT, a Poloniex cold wallet with about 28 trillion and a Bithumb hot wallet with about 14.6 trillion.

Exchange wallets hold tokens on behalf of many customers, so their size does not mean a single person controls those coins. The unlabeled wallet is a different matter: whoever controls it holds close to 5% of supply. Large holders can move a thin market, which is one more reason to check volume before trading.

Issue price, white paper and audit

The white paper gives an issuance date of 20 May 2021 via Huobi Prime (now HTX) and an “initial issuing price” of 0.000012 USD. Other sources report a much lower first-round price for the Huobi Prime sale, so which figure is final is not confirmed. Trading went live on 20 May 2021, and Poloniex LaunchBase also launched NFT as its first project. The full chronology is in our APENFT history timeline.

The current reference document is the AINFT White Paper v2.0, which covers the rebrand, tokenomics and the art collection. An archived copy of the original APENFT white paper is also available online. A SlowMist security audit of the token contract was requested in May 2021, as cited by the project.

APENFT’s tokenomics can be summed up in one line: a giant, fixed and fully released supply, with modest burns and a utility story that is still being written. Knowing that will not tell you where the price goes next, but it will protect you from most of the myths that circulate about this token.