What is a TGE (token generation event)?

A TGE, short for token generation event, is the moment a project's token is created on a blockchain and first starts to circulate. Airdrop claims and exchange listings often follow within days (Arbitrum opened ARB claims a week after its March 2023 TGE), but not every token is free to move: team and investor allocations are often locked and released over years. For an airdrop hunter, the TGE date tells you when a claim can open, not what the tokens will be worth.

What happens at a TGE

At a token generation event, the token's smart contract mints the supply and the planned allocations are assigned. Three examples from the projects' own documents:

• Uniswap (UNI). Uniswap Labs announced on 16 September 2020 that "1 billion UNI have been minted at genesis". The initial 4-year allocation was 60% to community members, 21.266% to team members and future employees, 18.044% to investors and 0.69% to advisors. The 15% set aside for past users could be claimed straight away.
• Arbitrum (ARB). The Arbitrum Foundation dates its token generation event to 16 March 2023, with an initial supply cap of 10 billion ARB. Airdrop claims opened a week later, on 23 March 2023.
• Hamster Kombat (HMSTR). The game's whitepaper (rev. 0.3, 12 September 2024) fixed the total supply at 100,000,000,000 HMSTR. Binance announced the same day that it would be the first platform to list the token, with trading from 26 September 2024 at 12:00 UTC, on the TON network.

How the supply is divided, and on what timetable, is the project's tokenomics.

Snapshot, TGE, claim and listing are different dates

These dates are easy to confuse. Arbitrum's docs give all of them for ARB:

The claim period was final. Tokens that were not claimed by the deadline went to the ArbitrumDAO treasury, and the docs now say ARB is no longer claimable.

A listing is a separate decision by each exchange. Binance's HMSTR notice set its own trading start, ran a 3-day Launchpool from 23 to 25 September 2024 before it, and offered eligible users the option of receiving their HMSTR airdrop in a Binance account instead of claiming it on-chain. The claim page itself was the game's own Telegram bot. Hamster Kombat has its own page here.

What "pre-TGE" means for airdrop hunters

Before the TGE there is no token. Points, in-game coins and "allocations" shown in an app are the project's own records, and the project decides how they convert. Hamster Kombat's whitepaper, for instance, listed what its first airdrop "will depend on": the overall game cycle, community interaction and activity, the quality of the friends a player invited, achievements, wallet integration and reputation. Airdrop points programs covers how points campaigns have converted into tokens.

The period before a token exists is also when fake sales appear. Binance's HMSTR announcement warned that "any claims to offer this token for sale before the stated timeline are likely to be false advertising", and Arbitrum's docs say in capitals: "THERE IS NO PRESALE". Airdrop scams covers the other tricks to expect.

After the TGE: vesting, cliffs and unlocks

Not everything minted at a TGE can be sold. Projects lock some allocations and release them on a vesting schedule, often after a cliff, a period in which nothing unlocks at all.

• Uniswap gave team members, investors and advisors 4-year vesting, on the same schedule as its community treasury: 40% in year 1, 30% in year 2, 20% in year 3 and 10% in year 4. Even the treasury waited 30 days: "After 30 days, governance will reach its vesting cliff."
• Arbitrum locked team, contributor and investor tokens for 4 years, with the first unlock 1 year after the TGE and monthly unlocks for the remaining 3 years. The user and DAO airdrops, by contrast, were available from the start of distribution.

Each token unlock adds to the circulating supply, which Arbitrum's docs define as "the amount of coins that are currently available to be transferred and utilized in the network". They also show how large one step can be: 1.537 billion ARB were in circulation on 7 March 2024, and the first team and investor unlock was expected to take that to 2.654 billion on 17 March 2024, out of 10 billion in total.

Market cap and fully diluted valuation

Two numbers get quoted around every TGE, and they measure different things:

• Market capitalisation is price multiplied by circulating supply. CoinGecko, which publishes its method, calculates the circulating supply of tokens on smart contract platforms "by deducting locked tokens from Total Supply", such as foundation, investor and team tokens.
• Fully diluted valuation (FDV) is, in CoinGecko's definition, "the theoretical market capitalization of a coin if the entirety of its supply is in circulation, based on its current market price."

A worked example with round numbers: a token with a total supply of 10 billion, 1.5 billion of them circulating, trading at $0.50, has a market cap of $750 million and an FDV of $5 billion. The difference is the 8.5 billion tokens not yet in circulation. CoinGecko itself calls FDV theoretical, because "increasing the circulating supply of a coin may impact its market price", and notes that full release can take "a significant time". Neither number is a forecast.

How to check a TGE date

1. Read the project's own announcement or docs. Arbitrum's docs give the TGE, the claim dates and the unlock schedule, with block numbers.
2. Check the exchange's own notice for a listing time. Binance published HMSTR's trading start on its own announcement page.
3. Read the unlock schedule, not only the launch date. It shows when more supply will arrive.
4. Treat a date in a direct message as unconfirmed until the project's own pages show it.

AirdropStop's airdrop listings each carry a status checked against the project's own pages, and what is a crypto airdrop explains how claims work. If you are likely to receive tokens at a TGE, airdrop taxes sets out what the IRS, HMRC and ATO say about when an airdrop counts as income.

Key takeaways

• A TGE is when a token is created and starts to circulate; the snapshot, claim window and exchange listing are separate dates.
• Before the TGE there is no token to buy, so offers of a pre-TGE sale are a warning sign.
• Team and investor tokens are often locked after a TGE and unlock on a schedule, raising the circulating supply.
• FDV values the whole supply at today's price; it is theoretical and not a prediction.