Mar 13, 2026

Round Economics: Where the NMR Actually Goes

Round-level NMR flows in the Numerai tournament — how much is earned, how much is burned, and whether the tournament remains net positive-sum for participants.

Every Numerai round moves NMR between stakers and the protocol. Good scores earn extra NMR from the protocol. Bad scores get burned from the staker's bond — permanently destroyed. Across all resolved weekly tournament-8 rounds, the protocol has paid out 1.60M NMR and burned 681K NMR, a net 921K NMR transferred to stakers. The single ugliest round, 469 in April 2023, burned 38,174 NMR in one week — more than the largest single-round earn ever printed (33,577 NMR in round 257).

This post breaks down the round-level economics using resolved rounds from the rounds list. For the broader token supply picture, see NMR Token Economics. For how the payout factor modulates these flows, see The Payout Factor. Live numbers also sit on the trends page.

Per-Round Flows

Each round produces some NMR earned by top performers and some NMR burned from the ones at the bottom.

Per-round NMR earned and burned for each resolved Numerai round, with earned bars above zero, burned bars below zero, and a dashed net-flow line

Nearly all of the large earn and burn activity sits between round 200 and round 500, with peak per-round earnings near 35-40K NMR. From round 600 onward both series shrink to a fraction of those early peaks. The net line still crosses below zero in stressed rounds, but the post-600 moves are much smaller than the early-era swings.

The biggest burns cluster between rounds 300 and 500, where shifting market regimes punished most models at once. Round 469 alone destroyed 38,174 NMR against just 987 NMR earned — a net loss roughly 4% of total stake in a single week. The biggest earning rounds line up with high payout factors in the same window: round 257 paid 33,577 NMR with the factor still pinned at 1.0, a setup that has not recurred since stake passed 400K NMR.

The Cumulative Picture

Stacking those flows reveals the long-run trajectory.

Cumulative NMR earned, burned, and net flow across resolved Numerai rounds, with earned above zero, burns below zero, and net payout remaining positive

Cumulative earned has outpaced cumulative burned over the resolved weekly sample. Lifetime earnings reach roughly 1.6M NMR while lifetime burns sit near 690K NMR, leaving the net curve around 900K NMR. Most of both lines built up between rounds 200 and 500, and the curves have moved slowly for hundreds of rounds since — the tournament is still net positive, but the per-round contribution is small.

This aggregate view hides enormous individual variation. Net positive flow concentrates in the top-performing models, and many participants finish with net negative lifetime returns even when the tournament as a whole is positive. See Is Staking Profitable? for the per-model distribution.

Efficiency Over Time

Expressing earned and burned as a percentage of total stake at risk normalizes for the tournament's growth. The round economics view on the trends page tracks payout factor, earned, and burned side by side for every round.

Earn rate and burn rate as percentages of total NMR at stake per round, with early spikes above 12% and recent rounds hugging a ±1% band

Early rounds swung wildly. Earn rate spiked above 12% and burn rate dipped below -4% between rounds 200 and 500. From round 600 onward both series collapse toward zero and sit inside a narrow ±1% band. As more NMR is staked, each unit of stake generates a smaller percentage return.

The gap between earn rate and burn rate is the tournament's net yield to stakers. When the earn rate clearly exceeds the burn rate, participants are collectively profitable. When they converge or invert, the tournament approaches zero-sum territory.

Is This Sustainable?

The rolling net yield — a 20-round average of (earned - burned) divided by total stake — is the cleanest sustainability gauge.

Rolling 20-round net yield as a percentage of total stake, peaking near 4.4% around round 260 and compressing to 0.2-0.5% after round 600

Rolling net yield peaked near 4.4% around round 260 and again near 2.9% around round 420. It briefly fell below zero during the difficult stretch around rounds 480-560, then recovered into a thin positive band after round 600. Numerai has been a net payer to stakers in aggregate, but the recent margin is much thinner than in the early stake-weighted era.

This article cannot observe fund alpha directly, so sustainability should be framed as a payout-cost question rather than proven fund economics. From Numerai's perspective, the NMR distributed to stakers is the cost of acquiring tournament signal for the hedge fund.

The danger is a persistently negative net yield where stakers systematically lose more than they earn. That would drive participation down, shrink the diversity of the meta-model, and hurt fund performance. The payout factor is the mechanism designed to prevent this feedback loop by adjusting incentives dynamically.

Takeaways

The tournament is net positive-sum in aggregate. Lifetime earned clears lifetime burned, so the tournament has been net positive-sum over the resolved weekly sample.

Individual outcomes vary enormously. Aggregate positive flow concentrates in top performers. Plenty of participants have net negative lifetime returns even though the tournament as a whole is positive-sum.

Earn and burn rates have compressed. As total stake has grown, percentage returns have declined to a ±1% band. That compression is the natural capacity constraint of the tournament.

Sustainability is a payout-cost question. The charts show what Numerai pays and burns in the tournament; they do not prove the fund alpha generated by those payments.