An emission schedule defines the rate and timeline for creating and distributing new tokens. It encompasses all sources of new supply, including staking rewards, liquidity mining incentives, and programmatic unlocks from the protocol.
Emission schedules vary widely across projects. Bitcoin follows a halving schedule where block rewards decrease by 50% every four years. Other projects may have linear emissions, exponential decay, or more complex multi-phase schedules tied to governance decisions.
Understanding a token's emission schedule is essential for predicting future supply dynamics. Emissions that significantly exceed organic demand growth will put downward pressure on price, while declining emissions (like Bitcoin halvings) can create supply shock effects.