Reading token stats: holders, volume, age and depth

A token page on a data site, or a row on the Trenches board, the app's live list of new coins, is a wall of numbers. After reading this page, you can tell what each one counts, which numbers are history, which describe what is there now, and why none of them is a safety score.

Most lessons named here sit in Token powers, a section of the Crypto road that opens after the free Memecoin starter.

Start with the mint address

On Solana, a token's identity is its mint address, the address of the record that defines it. Its name, ticker (its short symbol) and logo can be copied onto a different mint, making a look-alike token with its own pools and prices.

The lesson The token page layout checks the network and the full mint address before any other number. A pool, a pair of token reserves a program swaps between, counts only if its page shows your full mint address.

Total supply is how many units exist now. Circulating supply is a data site's estimate of the units in public hands.

A screener is a site that lists many coins, one row per trading pair, the two coins a market swaps. The lesson Screeners and pair pages shows that each figure in a row has its own source, time window and method, and that a pair page covers one pool alone.

Holders count addresses, not people

A holder count is a data site's number under its own rule, such as token accounts with a balance above zero. A token account is the record that holds one wallet's units of one coin. So the count is of accounts, not people.

The real number of people can be lower or higher. One wallet can own several token accounts, and one custody address, where an exchange holds coins for its customers, can stand for many people (Holder count versus real holders).

A top holders table ranks addresses by balance, each as a share of a stated supply, so check that base first. In The top holders table, an exchange row holds 120,000,000 of a total supply of 1,000,000,000: 12 percent. Against the site's circulating estimate of 800,000,000, the same balance is 15 percent.

On a computer, each Trenches board row carries up to five holder chips, small labels that double as filters under Holders and risk. A phone row shows all of them but Insiders:

• Top 10: the share of the supply held by the 10 largest wallets. When a few wallets hold a lot, one sale can move the price hard. Red above 20%.
• Dev: the share of the supply the creator wallet still holds. A creator can sell into your buy. Red above 20%.
• Snipers: the share held by wallets that bought in the first blocks, or batches of transactions, after launch, usually to sell to later buyers. Red above 10%.
• Insiders: the share held by wallets the data source links to the creator. They can sell together with the creator. Red above 10%.
• Bundles: the share bought together in bundled transactions, sent as one group. A bundle can spread one buyer across many wallets, though it does not prove it. Red above 10%.

A chip that is not red is no all-clear: a low Dev share is no promise, since a creator can hold coins in other wallets. The source reports Insiders for some coins only, so no Insiders chip, or 0%, means none reported, not a passed check.

Volume is history

Volume is how much changed hands in completed trades over a stated window, the exact time span. Audit traded-volume claims rebuilds it by counting each completed swap, a trade through a pool, once.

Easy to mix up: volume and money waiting to buy. Say a page shows 900 SOL of volume today, and the coin's only pool holds 60 SOL. The same SOL went in and out many times, paid to earlier sellers. Only the 60 SOL in the pool could pay you now, and no sale gets all of it (Past activity is not a buyer).

In Buy and sell counts, an hour shows 120 buys and 30 sells. Yet the buys put in 60 SOL and the sells took out 90, because a count weighs a tiny buy like a large sale. The TX bar on a board row is that kind of count: every trade, buys in green and sells in red.

Unique wallets trading counts every address that traded, each one once, but wallets funded by the same wallet may be one trader. So the real number of separate traders is at most that figure.

Two such wallets trading back and forth, with almost no change in holdings, show signs of wash trading. That can make volume look bigger than it is. Wash-trade indicators and proof limits treats them as a reason to investigate, not proof, and Investigate suspicious volume runs the whole check.

Volume to liquidity ratio divides volume by the value of the pool's reserves. In the lesson, a pool worth 20,000 USDC traded 480,000 USDC in a day, a ratio of 24, most of it from two wallets trading back and forth. A sale there would get about half of what the screen suggests, so the ratio describes activity, never safety.

When was it made, who made it, and what could be sold?

On a Trenches board row, age counts from the launch, or, for a migrated coin, from its move to a pool. Creation date and deployer goes back to the creation transaction: when the mint was set up, and which address, the deployer, signed and paid for it. That address does not tell you who the person is, or what they have done before.

An old date says when the mint began, not who controls it now. In the lesson, an old practice coin's mint authority, the power to make new coins, had moved to a new wallet eight days before the check. The board's dev history shows how many coins from the same creator wallet are on the board now, and how many migrated.

In Total supply and float, 300,000,000 of a coin's 1,000,000,000 sit in its pool and 200,000,000 are locked until day 90. Assuming the other 500,000,000 can all move, they are the holder float: coins that could be sold now, not coins that will be. After the unlock, the float is 700,000,000.

The lesson FDV and what it hides explains fully diluted valuation, or FDV: today's price times the total or maximum supply, locked coins included. So the unlock changes what could be sold, not FDV.

Who pays you when you sell?

Liquidity is what sits in the pool a coin trades in. On the Trenches board, a pool holds SOL and the coin, and sellers are paid from its SOL. Depth is how big that pool is next to your sale.

Market cap is a price times a circulating estimate: a calculation, not cash (Volume versus market cap). Liquidity versus market cap sets a coin's market cap beside its only pool: the pool's side that pays sellers is a tiny slice of the cap.

The exit quote is what a sale of one size would get right now. It already takes off fees and price impact, the drop your own sale causes, and it can change before you sell. The mark, your coins times the last price, is only what the screen suggests.

Later in that unit, the pool holds 50,000 coins and 100,000 USDC, a coin designed to track the dollar, and the last price is 2 USDC. A sale of 100,000 coins has a mark of 200,000 USDC, yet the pool would pay about 66,667. Each coin sold gets a lower price than the last, so the sale averages about 0.67 USDC a coin, not 2.

The lesson Who buys your exit names the buyer side: whatever could pay for your sale right now, here the pool. Unique buyers already bought, and holders could sell too, so neither counts.

What can the creator still do?

A creator can keep powers over a coin, called authorities. Check who holds each one on the chain, Solana's public record. A mint authority can create new coins and add them to any wallet it picks.

Say you hold 10,000,000 of a coin with a supply of 1,000,000,000: 1 percent. The mint authority then mints 250,000,000 into another wallet. Your balance is unchanged, but your share drops to 0.8 percent (Mint and freeze authority).

A freeze authority can freeze your coins: the balance stays, but nothing moves until they are unfrozen. The same lesson shows a post saying "authorities revoked" when only the mint power was given up, so the team could still freeze your coins.

A removed mint authority is a green flag: a check result that narrows one named concern. It says nothing about risks the check did not look at. In Green flags are not proof, a practice coin passed checks such as no mint authority and a top 10 share of 18 percent, under the board's red line of 20. It still fell 70 percent in a week as large holders sold into a thin pool.

So look for the fact that could show a coin is unsafe, not more good signs. When no page gives a number, write it down as unknown, with why it matters (Keep an unknown visible). A missing number is not zero, and not good or bad news. Spotting scams and low-quality tokens goes further into a creator's powers.