The FDV-to-raise ratio divides a token project's fully diluted valuation at listing by the total capital it raised across all private rounds. It is used as a quick sanity check on whether the public valuation is proportionate to the money that built the thing. It is a practitioner heuristic rather than an established metric: no major research firm publishes a canonical definition or a benchmark band for it, so treat any quoted standard as somebody's convention.
Both terms are softer than they look. FDV depends on which supply figure a data provider used, and total raised depends on what a team counts as a raise. Compute both yourself from primary documents or the ratio is arithmetic on two guesses.
The calculation, and what it is trying to catch
Take the fully diluted valuation on listing day and divide it by every dollar raised across seed, private, strategic and public rounds. A project that raised $20 million and lists at a $600 million FDV is at 30. The same ratio inverted is more intuitive: the capital that built the project bought about 3.3% of the fully diluted count.
What the check is looking for runs in both directions. A very high ratio says the public market is being asked to accept a valuation many multiples above anything a professional investor paid, with the gap justified by whatever the project has produced since. A very low ratio says the opposite problem, that the private rounds took a large share of supply relative to the eventual valuation, which shows up later as concentrated holdings and a heavy unlock schedule.
Nobody publishes a canonical version of this
It is worth being direct about the evidence here. We searched for a dedicated, publicly accessible definition of an FDV-to-raise ratio from a16z crypto, Messari, Delphi Digital and Dragonfly Capital and found none as of August 2026. There is no standard formula, no published band, and no institutional research establishing what a healthy value looks like.
That absence changes how the number should be used. It is a sanity check that experienced people run in their heads, not a metric with a literature behind it. Anyone quoting you a range for it, including us, is quoting a convention from their own book rather than a benchmark, and they should say so.
What the adjacent institutional data does establish
The closely related low-float, high-FDV pattern is much better documented. Binance Research measured a market cap to FDV ratio of 12.3% across tokens launched in 2024, the lowest of the previous three years, with circulating supplies in its sample as low as 6% and none exceeding 20% as of 14 May 2024.1 It estimated roughly $155 billion of tokens scheduled to unlock between 2024 and 2030, and calculated that around $80 billion of demand-side liquidity would need to flow in for those tokens to hold their prices as that supply arrives.1
Individual launches show the same shape. Wormhole's W token debuted on 3 April 2024 at $1.66, with a market cap of $2.98 billion against a fully diluted value of $16.5 billion.2 Ethena's ENA listed the day before with an airdrop of 750 million tokens representing 5% of total supply, trading near 64 cents with a market cap close to $500 million.3 Neither disclosure includes total capital raised, which is exactly why the FDV-to-raise ratio has no published dataset behind it.
How we actually use it
As a conversation opener during diligence, never as a threshold. Across the projects we have advised, a ratio that runs well past the low tens is usually a signal that the last private round was priced off comparable FDVs rather than off anything the business was producing, and that is a conversation about the business rather than about the token. That observation is ours, drawn from our own engagements, and we would not defend it as an industry standard because there is not one.
The follow-up questions are the point. What did the capital buy, in shipped product and revenue. What percentage of supply did each round receive, and at what price. When does that supply unlock. And what is the business expected to produce between now and then. A ratio that looks fine with no answers to those four is worth less than a ratio that looks stretched with good ones.
What breaks the calculation
The numerator is unstable. FDV depends on which supply figure the data provider used, and providers genuinely disagree: for the same token on the same day, one may publish an original protocol ceiling while another publishes a post-burn figure, producing FDVs that differ by a wide margin. Fix your supply definition before you compute anything.
The denominator is worse, because it is self-reported and rarely defined. Does the total include a strategic round priced in tokens rather than cash, an advisory allocation, a treasury swap with another protocol, or the cost of an airdrop? Teams count these differently, and the ratio moves substantially depending on the answer. If you use this check, write down your own definition of both terms, apply it consistently across every project you compare, and publish the definition alongside the number.
Common questions
How do you calculate the FDV to raise ratio?
Divide fully diluted valuation at listing by total capital raised across all private rounds. A project raising $20 million that lists at a $600 million FDV is at 30, meaning the capital that built it bought about 3.3% of the fully diluted count. Both inputs need defining first: FDV varies by which supply figure a provider used, and total raised varies by what the team counts as a round.
What is a good FDV to raise ratio?
There is no established answer, and that is the honest position. No major research firm publishes a canonical definition or benchmark band for this ratio, so any range quoted to you is a private convention rather than a standard. Use it to generate questions about what the capital bought, what share of supply each round received, and when that supply unlocks.
Is the FDV to raise ratio a standard metric?
No. It is a practitioner heuristic. Searching for a dedicated public definition from a16z crypto, Messari, Delphi Digital and Dragonfly Capital returned nothing as of August 2026. The adjacent low-float, high-FDV pattern is much better documented: Binance Research measured a 12.3% market cap to FDV ratio across 2024 launches and roughly $155 billion of unlocks scheduled through 2030.1
See Tokenomics Audit for how this applies in practice.
Sources
- Low Float & High FDV: How Did We Get Here?
Binance Research, 2024
12.3% market cap to FDV for 2024 launches, circulating supplies of 6% to 20%, roughly $155 billion of scheduled unlocks and about $80 billion of implied demand-side liquidity. - Wormhole Debuts at $3B Valuation in 617M Token Airdrop
CoinDesk, 2024
Debut at $1.66 with a $2.98 billion market cap against a $16.5 billion fully diluted value, airdrop of 617 million tokens at 6% of total supply. - Ethena Labs' ENA Token Goes Live, Starts Trading at 64 Cents
CoinDesk, 2024
Airdrop of 750 million ENA at 5% of total supply, trading near $0.64 with a market cap close to $500 million.
Last reviewed 2026-08
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