What Is Circulating Supply?
The circulating supply of a cryptocurrency project is an approximation of the number of tokens in public hands, being publicly available and circulating through markets.
It is a metric that never stays the same, it often increases or decreases based on market demand. Circulating supply may increase based on tokens entering circulation through staking or mining rewards and locked tokens being unlocked. Or it may decrease based on burning, accidental transactions to wrong addresses, and losing access to wallets.
The circulating supply is contrasted by the total supply, which defines the tokens that have been mined and issued. Both of these metrics are included within the maximum supply which calculates all of the tokens that will ever be available through a project.