Circulating vs total supply: how to read a new token's supply on ripr

By ripr Editorial Team10 Nov 20267 min read

Circulating vs total supply is one question asked two ways: how many of a token's coins sit in wallets people can trade from, and how many exist at all. For a new Solana meme coin the two numbers are usually far closer than they would be for an established token, and on ripr you read the difference off the coin page rather than from a single supply field.

Here is what each number means, where to find it, and what the gap between them tells you before you buy.

Circulating vs total supply: what each number means

Total supply is every coin that exists for a token right now. Circulating supply is the part of that total sitting in wallets people can trade from. The gap between the two is supply that exists but is not in anybody's hands yet — tokens held by the coin's own bonding curve or liquidity pool, or locked up until a release date.

On Solana, total supply is not a marketing figure. It is recorded on the token's mint account, the on-chain account that defines the coin, and it only moves if someone mints new tokens or burns existing ones. You can read it for any mint address on Solana's block explorer.

Number	What it counts	Where it comes from
Total supply	Every coin that exists for the token	The token's mint account on Solana
Circulating supply	The coins sitting in wallets people trade from	Total supply, minus what pools, curves and locks hold

Table 1. Circulating supply and total supply at a glance

Circulating supply is the softer of the two numbers, because "in circulation" is partly a judgement call: nobody has to agree on whether a pool balance or a creator's wallet counts. So it pays to look at where a coin's supply actually sits rather than trusting one headline figure.

How to read a new token's supply on ripr

On ripr you read a new token's supply structure from the coin page, in four steps.

Find the exact coin by its contract address. A contract address is a token's unique identifier on Solana, and the one thing a copycat cannot duplicate. ripr's search takes a name, a ticker or a full contract address — paste the address in full rather than typing part of it.
Check whether the coin is still on a bonding curve. Open the coin page, go to the About section and find Bonding Curve progress. Anything below 100% means the coin is still on its curve, and that progress updates live as the coin trades. While a coin is on a curve, a slice of its supply is held by the curve itself: supply that exists but has not reached a wallet. The help centre covers both halves of this — what "about to graduate" and "graduated" mean and what a bonding curve is in simple terms.
Read the holder shares. ripr's coin page shows how much of the supply the top 10 and the top 50 holders hold, and how much the creator holds, leaving pools and vaults out of the figure. Because pools are excluded, those shares describe the supply that sits in traders' wallets — the circulating side of the question.
Read the warnings. ripr checks coins, including brand-new ones, for coordinated-launch patterns, linked wallets and creators keeping supply, and shows anything it finds as a warning on the coin. It also says plainly that not seeing a warning never means a coin is safe.

Why a new coin's two supply numbers are usually the same

A new Solana meme coin normally mints its whole supply once, at launch, and never mints again — so its total supply and its circulating supply end up describing nearly the same pile of coins. There is no vesting schedule, no team unlock and no monthly emission waiting to arrive, which is also why a fully diluted figure for a coin like that ends up close to its market cap.

"Nearly" is doing real work in that sentence, and ripr's own market data shows why. On one coin barely a minute old, the mint said two billion tokens in total, and about 44% of them were still held by the coin's own bonding curve rather than by a wallet. On a coin a few hours old that had already finished its curve, the total came to just under a round billion and the top 10 wallets between them held well under one percent of the coins in circulation.

The two numbers converge, in other words, but not on day one. Early on, the curve or the pool can be the single largest holder of a coin; later the supply has spread across thousands of wallets and the distinction stops mattering much.

What the supply gap tells you before you buy

The supply gap matters because it tells you who can sell into you. A coin whose supply is still mostly inside its curve has a different shape of risk from one where a handful of wallets already hold most of the tradable supply, and the top 10, top 50 and creator shares on ripr tell you which of the two you are looking at.

It also changes how you read a valuation. A market cap is a price multiplied by a supply figure, so the supply behind it decides what that number means. On ripr's web charts you can switch the view from price to market cap, so you read the valuation directly instead of doing the multiplication in your head. Our guide to a market-cap strategy for meme coins covers how to trade by size band once you can read the pair.

Three habits are worth keeping whatever the supply says.

Start small. A first position you can afford to be wrong about is worth more than a perfect read on the supply.
Check the creator. ripr lists the other coins a creator has launched, so you can judge the pattern yourself.
Filter at the list level. Explore's "Hide warnings" filter drops coins ripr has flagged out of your list. It is off by default, so turn it on once — and still open each coin page, because a coin that has not been checked yet stays in the list.

ripr's help centre puts the rest plainly: nobody can guarantee a market outcome, so ignore anyone who promises one. Our walkthrough of how to spot a risky meme coin takes the warning patterns one at a time, and the help centre's guide to trading more safely is the short version.

Frequently asked questions

Does a token's circulating supply change after it launches?

Yes. A token's circulating supply shifts as coins move between its bonding curve, its liquidity pool and traders' wallets, even while the total supply stays exactly where it started. On a new Solana coin that mostly means supply leaving the curve as people buy. ripr's coin page shows the holder side of that movement: the share of supply held by the top 10 and top 50 holders and by the creator, with pools and vaults left out.

Is a one billion total supply normal for a Solana meme coin?

Many Solana launchpad coins are minted with a total supply of about one billion, but it is a convention rather than a rule — ripr's own market data shows new coins minted with two billion as well. Because the figure is arbitrary, a low price per token means nothing by itself: the supply and the valuation only make sense read together.

Can a new token's total supply go up after you buy?

A Solana token's total supply can only change if someone mints new tokens or burns existing ones, and most launchpad coins are minted once at launch and left alone. The mint account that records the supply is public, so you can check it for any token on Solana's block explorer before you buy.

Check the supply before you check the chart

Supply is the quiet half of a new coin's valuation: the same price per token means one thing against a billion coins and something very different against a hundred million. Read the total first, work out how much of it is actually in wallets, and the chart gets much easier to interpret.

On ripr the whole check fits on one coin page: paste the contract address into search, open About for Bonding Curve progress, then read the top 10, top 50 and creator shares underneath. Start from Explore, which lists trending, newly launched and upcoming coins and lets you keep a watchlist of the ones you want to follow.

Last verified 3 November 2026. This article is published by ripr, which builds an app for trading Solana coins. Nothing here is financial advice.