There was some discussion today in the Telegram group about circulating supply reporting. There is an open question for us to debate as a community: Should we change how SCRT circulating supply is recorded on aggregators like Coingecko or Coinmarketcap?
I have my own personal opinions on “circulating supply” as a metric:
Any definition of circulating supply is inconsistently enforced. It differs for each aggregator, for each development team, and even for each community member. It often relies on there being a single centralized development organization that retains the majority of “treasury.”
It’s not nearly as useful as “total” or “maximum” supply as a metric. I think Messari takes a good approach, looking at the release of tokens over time + network inflation and creating an available supply curve.
It’s not apples-to-apples across L1s and apps, or even comparing apps across L1s. Are pre-minted app tokens equivalent to future inflation? Are they immediately circulating? Does it depend on the network?
Acknowledging the inherent challenges in this metric, I’d like to start an open discussion with the intention of creating an on-chain signaling proposal when there seems to be more consensus on the right direction for us to take.
Recently the ATOM community changed the measurement of ATOM circulating supply on CoinGecko, with “circulating” now reflecting the entire supply of created ATOM:
Meanwhile, Coinmarketcap still shows the original reported and “verified” circulating supply, then the Total Supply as the current amount of created ATOM.
This has impacted Cosmos’ relative rank across both aggregators (though because the % difference between total/circulating is relatively small and their rank is already so high, it’s a minor difference overall). Other Tendermint-based chains appear to still use different reporting methods, with circulating supply differing meaningfully from the total:
For Secret this decision on reporting may have substantial consequences, including aggregator rank (up to 100-150 places), future assumptions about growth, etc. To be clear, none of this changes the facts: the coins exist one way or the other in varying degrees of availability and the current inflation schedule is known (though changeable); we’re just trying to make a best effort to adhere to an ambiguous and inconsistent metric.
Please comment here if you have feelings one way or the other about how our “circulating” supply should be reported relative to the existing supply of coins, which can be found on network explorers like https://secretnodes.com.
Thanks for helping address this important and impactful decision!
I have relatively voiced my opinion in Cosmos about the Circulating Supply and Total Supply.
There are a couple of things to note:
There are inflation tokens being minted.
There are staked tokens (that are locked for 3 weeks)
There are locked tokens on-paper(offline on contracts)
There are locked tokens on-chain on the DeFi application.
In my opinion
circulating supply = total tokens - all locked tokens ( case 1, 2 ,3, 4)
total supply = reported supply by the network every 24 hours ( we inflate every block technically)
In the calculation of circulating supply case 3 and 4 are very hard to nail down. The former, Offline Contracts are impossible to track and verify with authenticity, and the later on chain de-fi application may have variable locking times and may not report accurately.
But I think cases 1 and 2 can be tracked and reported directly by the network. Cosmos does not count case 2 in their circulating supply, makes sense with liquid staking (coming soon but not here yet). For the longest time, I always called it inaccurate, as that places Cosmos MKcap very high in the ranking schema for these aggregators.
I disagree secret network should report the full supply as circulating supply, as well and be placed higher in the rankings ( we use this as our own marketing tool if nothing else)
Honestly, it’s probably worth updating it. By doing so, we are still honest in our representation of the Network but it provides a small advertising boost in that people will likely look more kindly at a project that is higher up the rankings.
I understand your sentiment Tor but we should use this inconsistent metric in a way that benefits us.
when i look at a coin, its max supply is the first thing i look at. i think comparing circulating supply with max supply tells me how much inflation i can expect … however, i think high inflation is fine after watching Ethereum have high inflation for years and now implement a deflationary mechanism. i think that is an amazingly good strategy .
I am a bit confused by this response @mohammedpatla so i’ll try to clarify it:
I disagree secret network should report the full supply as circulating supply
Do you mean that we should or should not report the total supply (I take this to mean all currently created coins as reported by the network) as the circulating supply? If you mean should, can you outline the main benefits of doing this? Is it strictly rank appreciation? If you mean should not, do you mean:
we should report the full supply minus staked tokens (I don’t think this is consistent with other networks’ reporting, nor do I think it’s necessarily beneficial)
we should report the full supply minus locked tokens on-chain in DeFi applications (again, I don’t think this is consistent or beneficial, and it is even more volatile of a metric than bonded supply)
we should report the full supply minus locked tokens on-paper (how would we define these tokens? loosely? strictly?)
some combination of the above?
Of those suggestions, I would only favor 3). Currently we’ve been reporting a very loose form of 3); we could take a substantially stricter definition of “circulating” that brings the reported circulating supply much closer to the actual current total supply.
Just to clarify, i mean we should report the total supply as the circulating supply.
Main benefits, yes getting to a higher rank.
People who use the website like Coinmarketcap and Coingecko:
People who are investing in the crypto space and need to monitor their holdings, be it HODLrs or Traders, are here to make sure their price is the accurate price they are getting.
People to find new tokens and market discovery. The ones who are coming to find the right details about a project.
I don’t think us displaying the total supply as circulating supply really changes much other than bump us up, in the rankings. So why should be shy away from that? higher rank means more awareness and easier reach. Our market cap is defined by the circulating supply which keeps on changing inconsistently rater if it ties to network inflation we can expect a certain amount of increase at a steady pace.
I don’t know in any case that the circulating supply matters, other than the placement of our project on these said aggregators.
I think reporting the total supply as the max supply wouldn’t be correct. I believe funds like the ecosystem pool should not be considering circulating.
However, I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we aren’t reporting staked SCRT as circulating supply.
For me, the rankings are less important. For me, the ratio between circulating supply and total supply is an indication of how many tokens have been released, and how much more will still be released. When analyzing a project from an investor perspective those releases could have a negative price impact.
In other words, the statistics read as if there is more downward price pressure from future releases than there is in reality. Hurting the attractiveness of SCRT as an investment.
I’m in favor of reporting the total supply as circulating supply minus the funds and paper locked coins. Staked coins are absolutely circulating IMO. I would not object to reporting the total supply in all, as circulating supply, since there is a strong precedent with Atom. I believe MCap and total supply are the most important metrics and what nearly all begin their search with.
To be clear, we don’t currently factor bonded/staking rate in any supply reporting (nor do I believe does any other Tendermint-based network). I think there is already consensus that the bonded rate will not impact any reporting of circulating figures. The current circulating supply figure on aggregators stems from the December tokenomics and ecosystem pool blog post.
circulating supply = total supply - ecosystem fund - vested funds
I think it is a more accurate value to use. We have 93 mil staking, 28 mil on binance, and almost 12 mil locked as sscrt alone. At some point people will ask about when the rest unlocks when it lowkey already has been. I say we rip the bandaid off now and enjoy the fact that our ranking is factoring in much more of our current total supply. people will like that we have less of an ability to surprise them in terms of supply. we would actually be back again to a top 200 coin, one with plenty of more runway still!
I do understand it is a very inconsistent metric that can be manipulated but that doesnt meant we cant define it in a way we see fit. This new calculation should better tie inflation to the growth of our circulating supply and ultimately our ranking.
