What is token generation event (TGE)?

The moment a project's token is first created and distributed, usually alongside the start of trading and the beginning of every vesting clock.

It is the reference date for lockups, cliffs, and unlock schedules, so a schedule described as twelve months from the event means twelve months from that day. Circulating supply at the event is often a small fraction of total supply, which is what makes early market capitalization and fully diluted valuation diverge so widely. See unlock, vesting cliff, and fdv.

The date matters more than almost anything else in a token's early tokenomics, because every scheduled supply increase is measured from it.

How it works

At the event the token contract is deployed, the total supply is minted or the issuance schedule begins, and allocations are assigned to categories: public distribution, team, investors, treasury, ecosystem incentives. Most of those allocations are locked.

Three figures are then in play and they are routinely confused.

Circulating supply is what is actually liquid and tradable. At the event this is often a small share of the total, sometimes under ten percent.

Total supply is everything minted or scheduled, including locked allocations.

Fully diluted valuation multiplies the price by total supply, and market capitalization multiplies it by circulating supply. When circulating is a small fraction, those two numbers differ by a large multiple, and the gap is exactly the supply that will arrive later. See fdv and circulating supply.

The schedule tied to the event usually includes a cliff, a period during which a locked allocation releases nothing, followed by linear vesting over months or years. A twelve-month cliff means the first release lands on the first anniversary of the event, and that date is knowable in advance from the project's own tokenomics documentation.

RampAtlas records unlock schedules from those documents, with a source and a verification date, and shows what is scheduled to arrive.

Example

Illustrative figures. A token has a total supply of 1 billion. At the event, 100 million are circulating, which is ten percent, and the price is $1. Market capitalization is $100 million and fully diluted valuation is $1 billion, a tenfold gap.

The team allocation is 200 million with a twelve-month cliff and then thirty-six months of linear vesting. Nothing from it moves for a year. On the first anniversary the first tranche unlocks, and from then on roughly 200 million ÷ 36 = 5.6 million tokens release each month, which is 5.6% of the original circulating supply arriving monthly from one allocation alone.

Why it matters when you buy

Scheduled supply is knowable ahead of time and it is one of the few forward-looking facts about a token that is not speculation. The unlock pages show the verified schedules RampAtlas tracks with their sources, the unlock pressure rankings show how much supply arrives in the next thirty and ninety days as a share of circulating supply, and the coin pages show the current supply figures.

Related terms

• unlock — the scheduled release itself
• vesting cliff — the initial no-release period
• lockup vesting — the wider schedule structure
• fdv — the valuation on total supply
• circulating supply — the tradable portion
• ico — an earlier form of the same moment

Questions

Is the event the same as the exchange listing?

Often but not always. Trading can begin on a decentralized venue at generation and reach centralized exchanges later, so the two dates sometimes differ by days or longer.

Where do unlock dates come from?

From the project's own tokenomics documentation. RampAtlas records them with a source and a verification date, and schedules without a dated source are not published. See the unlock pages.

Does a low circulating supply mean the price will fall?

It means more supply is scheduled to arrive, which is a fact about the schedule rather than a prediction about price. What the market does with it is not something this site forecasts.