Data Provider
A company or project that collects, cleans, and publishes digital-asset data such as prices, supply figures, and network metrics.
The work behind a single published figure is substantial: connecting to exchange interfaces, running and indexing nodes, maintaining address labels, estimating circulating supply from disclosed schedules, and combining venue prices into one composite. Every one of those steps involves choices, so two competent providers can publish different values for the same named metric without either being wrong. Commercial structure matters as well, since some providers earn revenue from listings, rankings, or the exchanges whose data they aggregate, which creates incentives worth knowing about. Sound research practice is to name the provider and the retrieval date alongside every figure, because the underlying numbers are revised.
In practice
Two providers can publish different circulating supply figures for the same token because one excludes a foundation wallet the other counts as circulating.
The common misunderstanding
There is no official source for most digital-asset statistics; every headline figure is one provider's methodology applied to imperfect inputs.