Circulating Supply

Circulating supply is the count of tokens the provider considers outstanding and transferable, after excluding balances it classifies as locked, vesting, burned, or otherwise unavailable. It is the denominator behind market capitalization and behind almost every per-token supply metric on this site. Despite appearing as a hard number, it is the product of a classification process rather than a direct reading from the chain.

Where it misleads

Circulating supply is a judgment, not an observation: providers apply different rules for foundation wallets, unvested team allocations, and tokens sent to addresses with no known key, and they revise those rules without notice, which shifts market capitalization overnight with no on-chain event behind it. Tokens bonded to a proof-of-stake validator with a multi-day or multi-week unbonding delay are normally counted as circulating even though they cannot be sold immediately. Wrapped and bridged representations of the same asset can be counted on both the origin and destination chain, inflating the total. A foundation holding a large unlocked balance under a public commitment not to sell may be included or excluded depending on the provider.

The equity comparison, and why it fails

Free-float shares outstanding. The analogy fails because share counts are filed with a securities regulator, reconciled by a transfer agent, and audited, while circulating supply is a private data provider's estimate with no filing, no registrar, and no legal definition of what counts as outstanding.

Reading a high or a low value

A larger circulating supply relative to total supply means more of the eventual supply is already transferable. Because the classification rules differ by provider, the same token can carry materially different circulating supply figures across sites.