A launch is presented as the beginning of something, and mechanically it is closer to the middle. By the time anybody can buy, the allocation has been decided, the schedule of future supply is written, and the parties who received the largest amounts did so at prices that are usually published. Reading that document is the difference between participating in a market and participating in somebody else's plan.
A token is an entry in a ledger, and creating one costs nothing. What a launch distributes is therefore not the tokens themselves but a claim on whatever the project ends up being worth, divided according to a table that somebody wrote before anybody outside could participate.
That table is the substance of the event. It says how much went to the team, how much to early backers, how much is reserved for a foundation or treasury, how much is set aside for future incentives, and how much is available to anybody at launch. The proportions vary enormously and they are almost always published somewhere.
Reading it answers the only question that matters at this stage, which is what fraction of the eventual supply the public is being offered and on what terms relative to everybody who came earlier. The answer is frequently surprising to people who did not look, and it is never hidden so much as buried.
A launch does not create value, it divides a claim. The table that does the dividing is published, and almost nobody reads it.
Three figures are quoted and they measure different things. Circulating supply is what exists and moves today. Total supply is what has been created, including amounts that are locked. Maximum supply is the ceiling written into the rules, where one exists at all.
Market capitalisation computed from circulating supply and market capitalisation computed from total supply are therefore two different statements, and the gap between them can be several multiples. Neither is wrong; quoting only the smaller one when the larger one is much bigger is where the misleading happens, and it is extremely common.
The useful habit is to compute both and look at the ratio. A project where the circulating figure is a small fraction of the eventual total is one where most of the supply has not arrived yet, and that is a structural fact about the situation rather than a criticism of it. It changes what the current price is a price of.
Allocations to teams and early backers are usually released over time rather than at once, which is the point of a vesting schedule. A cliff is an initial period during which nothing is released at all, followed by a first tranche and then a gradual stream.
The mechanism exists to align the people who built the thing with its continued existence, and in that narrow sense it works. What it also does is place a known quantity of future supply on a known calendar, visible to anybody who reads the documentation, which makes it one of the few genuinely predictable facts in an environment with very few.
Predictable is not the same as consequential, and it is worth being precise about the difference. The schedule tells you when tokens become transferable. It does not tell you whether anybody transfers them, at what price, or what the market does about it. Treating the first as if it settled the second is the error to avoid.
An unlock is the moment a tranche becomes transferable. The only thing it establishes with certainty is that the number of tokens capable of moving increases on that date, by an amount stated in advance in the documentation.
What holders do with them is an open question and it varies. Some sell, some do not, some had already hedged the exposure through other instruments, and the aggregate behaviour is not something the schedule can tell you. Anybody who claims to know what an unlock will do to a price is claiming knowledge the schedule does not contain.
The reasonable use of the information is narrow and real: knowing that a date exists, knowing roughly how large the tranche is relative to what circulates, and being aware of it rather than surprised by it. That is a description of the calendar, and it is the whole of what the calendar offers.
The float is the fraction of the eventual supply that is actually tradeable at launch. When it is small, a modest amount of buying moves the price a long way, because there is very little available to absorb it and most of the supply is locked.
That produces a headline valuation derived from a thin slice of the whole, and then applied to the whole. The arithmetic is not fraudulent and it is fragile: the price at which a small float trades is not evidence that the same price would survive the arrival of the rest, and nothing about the mechanism claims that it would.
This is why the ratio of float to total supply is one of the most informative single numbers available at launch. It does not tell you whether something is good. It tells you how much of the story the current price is actually pricing, which is a prerequisite for reading any other number.
A newly launched asset has no natural two-sided market, so one has to be manufactured. Somebody has to be willing to quote both sides, and in practice that is either the project itself, a firm engaged for the purpose, or an automated pool seeded with a paired asset.
Each arrangement has a different implication for what the early price means. A firm engaged to make markets is being paid to be there, often with an inventory provided by the project and terms that are rarely public. An automated pool prices from a formula and a starting ratio that somebody chose, which is a decision rather than a discovery.
The practical consequence for anybody trading in the first hours is that depth is thin, the quoted price reflects a small number of decisions, and the cost of crossing is at its highest. Those are the conditions under which the largest proportion of retail activity in a launch actually occurs, which is worth noticing.
In the first hours, depth is thinnest and the cost of crossing is highest. That is precisely when the largest share of launch activity happens.
A venue listing an asset means the venue decided to offer it, according to criteria that vary by venue and are usually only partly public. It is a commercial and operational decision that says something about process and very little about the asset itself.
It does not constitute an endorsement, a verification of the claims made by the project, or an assessment of whether the thing is worth anything. Venues list assets that later fail, and they delist them, and both are ordinary occurrences rather than scandals.
What a listing does establish is real and narrow: the asset can now be reached by the users of that venue, which changes who can participate and usually changes the depth available. Treating that as information about accessibility rather than about quality keeps the distinction where it belongs.
The distribution table, the vesting schedule and the supply figures are normally in a public document, and the version that matters is the one on the project's own site rather than a summary elsewhere. Aggregator pages routinely carry figures that are stale or that quote one supply measure while labelling it another.
The second source is the chain itself. Allocations, locking contracts and treasury addresses are visible, and the balance actually held by a contract is a fact rather than a claim. Comparing what a document says with what an address holds is a check anybody can run, and disagreements between the two are informative.
The third is the history of the document. Distribution tables get revised, and a project that has changed its allocation more than once has told you something about how firm the current version is. The earlier versions are usually still findable, and looking for them takes minutes.
Five things, all published, all quick. The ratio of circulating to total supply. The date and size of the next unlock. Whether the team allocation has a cliff and where it is. Whether liquidity is provided by an identifiable arrangement. And whether the contract can be changed, and by whom.
The fifth is the one people skip and it carries the largest tail risk. A token contract that can be upgraded, paused, or have its supply altered by a key that a small group controls is a different instrument from one that cannot, whatever the documentation says about intentions. The capability is visible in the code.
None of these five predicts anything and that is not their purpose. They describe the position you would be taking, which is the part a trader can actually establish before committing. What happens afterwards is not knowable from any of them, and no arrangement of them makes it knowable.
Everything above is about the distribution, which is the part that is documented. It says nothing about whether the project does anything useful, whether the people involved are competent, or whether the thing has any reason to exist. Those questions are harder and they are not answered by a table.
It also says nothing about price, in either direction. A well-structured distribution is not a reason to expect anything, and a poorly structured one is not a reason to expect the opposite. The relationship between distribution structure and outcome is not clean enough to support a rule, and anybody selling one is selling more than the evidence supports.
What the reading does is remove one specific category of surprise: discovering after the fact that the terms were public, unfavourable and unread. That is a modest benefit and it is entirely achievable, which is more than can be said for most of what is offered on this subject.
Circulating supply is what exists and moves today. Total supply is everything created, including locked amounts. Maximum supply is the ceiling in the rules, where one exists. Market capitalisation computed from the first and from the second are two different statements, and the gap can be several multiples.
An initial period during which none of an allocation is released, followed by a first tranche and then a gradual stream. It exists to align the people who built the project with its continued existence, and it also places a known quantity of future supply on a known calendar that anybody can read.
No, and the schedule does not contain that information. An unlock establishes that the number of transferable tokens increases on a stated date by a stated amount. What holders do with them varies, some had already hedged, and the aggregate behaviour is not something a calendar can tell you.
Because a modest amount of buying moves the price a long way when little is available to absorb it. The resulting valuation is derived from a thin slice and applied to the whole. The ratio of float to total supply tells you how much of the story the current price is actually pricing.
Either the project itself, a firm engaged for the purpose, or an automated pool seeded with a paired asset. A firm is being paid to be there, often with inventory provided by the project on terms rarely made public. An automated pool prices from a starting ratio somebody chose.
No. A listing is a commercial and operational decision made against criteria that vary by venue and are usually only partly public. It is not an endorsement or a verification of the project's claims. What it does establish is that the asset can now be reached by that venue's users.
The project's own document first, because aggregator pages routinely carry stale figures or quote one supply measure while labelling it another. Then the chain itself, where allocations, locking contracts and treasury balances are visible. Disagreements between the document and the addresses are informative.
Whether the token contract can be upgraded, paused, or have its supply altered by a key a small group controls. That capability is visible in the code and makes it a materially different instrument, whatever the documentation says about intentions.