What is Total Supply?

Total supply is the complete count of tokens that exist on-chain right now including circulating tokens, locked vesting tokens, and treasury reserves. It differs from circulating supply (what's actively tradeable) and max supply (the absolute hard cap).

How does Total Supply work?

Total supply is queryable directly from any token contract via totalSupply(). It increases when new tokens are minted and decreases when tokens are burned.

The gap between total and circulating supply reveals how much future dilution exists as vesting unlocks.

Why does Total Supply matter?

A project with 100 million circulating but 900 million total supply means 90 percent future dilution for current holders as vesting completes. Fully diluted valuation (FDV) uses total supply to show the true implied market cap.

Key features of Total Supply

Includes all tokens: circulating, locked, and reserved
Queryable on-chain via totalSupply() fully transparent
Gap vs. circulating supply = future dilution risk
Less than or equal to max supply

Examples of Total Supply

Bitcoin's total and max supply are nearly equal almost all BTC has been mined. Uniswap has 1 billion total UNI but only 768 million circulating, meaning significant vesting remains.

Ethereum's total supply grows slowly from staking rewards but is partially offset by EIP-1559 burns.