Glossary
Circulating Supply
The portion of a token's total supply currently available to the market — excludes locked, vested, or burned tokens. The denominator for market cap.
Circulating supply tries to capture "how many tokens are actually in someone's hands and free to be sold". Locked team tokens, vested contributor allocations, treasury reserves, and burned supply are all excluded.
The definition is fuzzy in practice — every aggregator (CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, DefiLlama) draws the line slightly differently — which is why FDV/MC analysis matters. Tokens with low circulating supply at launch can post very high prices, then face sustained sell pressure as unlocks hit.