What is total supply?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 3 min
In short
Total supply is how many tokens exist right now: everything ever issued, minus everything burned. It is neither the amount trading freely nor the eventual cap. Confusing the three throws market-cap calculations badly off.
Key points
- The number of tokens that exist right now
- Everything issued, less everything burned
- Includes locked and undistributed tokens
- A different figure from circulating and max supply
Definition
The number of tokens currently in existence: everything minted, minus everything burned. It includes locked tokens and those held by the project itself.
An ERC-20 contract exposes totalSupply, which returns the current figure. It includes tokens locked in vesting for the team and investors, and tokens the foundation holds but has not distributed. It is what exists, not what can be traded.
Burns lower it and new issuance raises it. When a burn is done by sending to the zero address, the contract's totalSupply may not change at all, so it is worth checking whether an explorer's figure and its basis agree.
Which supply figure goes into a market-cap calculation can change the answer several times over. The market cap normally quoted uses circulating supply; multiplying by total supply is reported separately as fully diluted valuation. Knowing which one you are looking at matters.
Watch out for
- · A market cap based on total supply does not reflect what is actually tradable
- · Different data sites use different definitions, so figures for one asset can disagree
- · If a mint permission remains, total supply can still change