First published 9 October 2020, as the public sale closed. Expanded in October 2026 so a collectible is not described as FLOW, and so 1.25 billion is not described as a ceiling. Flow is a chain built for consumer apps. Dapper Labs shipped it. Roham Gharegozlou is the person most associated with that studio, which had already shipped CryptoKitties. FLOW is the fee. A highlight in NBA Top Shot is an NFT on this chain. It is not FLOW. An NFT is a receipt, not a painting in a vault. Sending the token does not send the highlight.
The beta network opened on 15 May 2020, before the token people trade. The public sale on CoinList ran through 2 October 2020. Genesis created 1.25 billion FLOW: about 32 percent for an ecosystem fund, 30 percent for backers and that sale, 20 percent for Dapper Labs, and 18 percent for the team. Those piles were locked, and the project said the allocated locks had finished by October 2023. An unlock was coins that already existed. New FLOW is still minted when transaction fees do not cover staking rewards. There is no hard cap. A price times 1.25 billion is the opening figure, not the live count.
The project’s own pages do not even agree on whether genesis was June or October 2020. What you can check is the sale window and the 1.25 billion allocation. Contracts are written in a language called Cadence. This page will not walk through one. Staking FLOW is a lock that can pay more FLOW. Staking is a lock and a queue, not a savings account. A Flow address can be written with 0x. It is not an Ethereum address. A wrapped FLOW on Ethereum is a claim, not the native coin. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Nothing here is an instruction to stake, to buy a highlight, or to buy FLOW.
