Base Rate Decay, Explained

Most people joining a new crypto project have no idea that waiting even a few weeks could cut their earning rate in half. PLX Network has a built-in decay system for its base mining rate, and understanding it before you download the app is the single most useful thing you can do for your long-term earnings.

What is the base rate?

Your base rate is the speed at which you mine PLX — measured in PLX per hour. Here's the rule that changes everything: the moment you join PLX Network, your rate locks to your account permanently. Whatever rate exists at the exact second you sign up is yours forever. It never drops for you, no matter how many decay cycles happen afterward.

What actually triggers a decay

A decay event fires when either of two conditions is met — whichever happens first:

• User growth trigger: the total user count grows to 16.1226× the count at the start of the current cycle
• Time trigger: two full years pass since the last decay event

Why early matters: the numbers

Users who joined before May 1, 2026 locked in 7.36 PLX/hr — the highest base rate that will ever exist in the PLX ecosystem, frozen permanently for those accounts. By comparison, users joining after the sixth decay cycle only enter at 1.13 PLX/hr. That's roughly 6.5× more per hour, every hour, forever — just for having joined earlier.

The six decay cycles

Here's how the entry rate for new users has moved across each historical decay cycle:

That's an 84.67% reduction from the original entry rate by the sixth cycle — every cycle that passes pushes new entrants further behind early adopters.

The decay pattern

Decay doesn't apply the same percentage drop every time — it follows a repeating three-step pattern: the first decay in a cycle drops the rate by 24%, the second by 16%, the third by 12%, then the pattern repeats.

How many users it actually takes

The user-growth trigger requires the user base to grow to 16.1226× its size at the start of the cycle. Starting from an example base of 10,000 early users, here's roughly what each threshold looks like:

These are example projections based on the formula, not guarantees — real timing depends on actual user growth, and the two-year time trigger could fire first regardless of user count.

The takeaway

Every decay cycle that passes permanently locks new users into a lower mining rate. The window to secure a high base rate is open right now — once the next trigger fires, whether from user growth or the two-year clock, the entry rate drops and it doesn't come back for anyone who joins after.