Fully diluted valuation (FDV)
In short Fully diluted valuation (FDV) is token price times max supply: the project's value if every token that will ever exist were already circulating.
Fully diluted valuation, or FDV, is the price of a token multiplied by the maximum number of tokens that will ever exist. That count includes tokens that are still locked, unvested, or not yet minted. Market cap only counts the circulating supply. FDV answers a different question: what would this project be worth if the entire supply were already trading at the same price?
The gap between the two numbers is future supply. Say a token trades at $0.50, with 100 million in circulation and a max supply of 1 billion. Market cap is $50 million and FDV is $500 million. The other 900 million tokens usually sit in team allocations, investor vesting, treasuries, staking rewards, or ecosystem funds, and they reach the market over time through unlocks and emissions.
This matters because new supply is sell pressure. If circulating supply grows tenfold and demand stays flat, the price has to fall for the market cap to stay the same. A token with a small market cap and a huge FDV looks cheap and moves easily on little volume, but it also has a lot of dilution ahead. Dividing market cap by FDV gives a quick read on how much of the supply is already out there. A low ratio means most of the tokens have yet to arrive.
FDV is a hypothetical number, and it has traps. If a token has no max supply, or the owner can mint more, there is no reliable FDV at all. Some trackers also calculate it differently, or use total supply instead of max supply, so compare figures across sources. On thin liquidity, a single trade can set the price, which makes any valuation built on it close to meaningless.
Before you lean on FDV, look at the vesting schedule: when cliffs end, how much unlocks, and who holds the locked tokens. Check whether the contract can mint more. Then compare FDV against similar projects, not just market cap. A high FDV does not predict a crash, and a low one does not make a token safe, but it tells you how much supply is still waiting.