What Is Maximum Supply?
The maximum supply is the total amount of tokens that will enter circulation in the lifetime of a cryptocurrency project. This includes all tokens which have and haven’t been minted and tokens which have been lost or burned.
A majority of projects will issue a maximum supply in its protocol, which once exhausted – will not issue any more tokens. Although some projects, including Ethereum, do not have this metric.
The max supply is different from the total supply of a token, which calculates the cryptocurrencies that have been mined or issued. Max supply also includes the circulating supply which is the total amount of tokens in circulation – in public hands.