Token unlocks

What an unlock is

Most tokens do not launch with their whole supply in circulation. A share is set aside for the team, for the investors who funded it, for the foundation, for ecosystem programmes and airdrops, and that share is locked at launch and released on a written schedule: a cliff, where a block arrives on one day, or a linear drip, where a fixed amount arrives every day or month for years. An unlock is the moment a block of that supply becomes transferable.

It matters because it is supply meeting the market on a known date. But an unlock is not a sale. The tokens go to people who may sell, may hedge, or may hold; many large recipients have sold forward on perpetuals months earlier, so the day itself passes quietly. What carries information is the size of the unlock against the float already trading, not the dollar figure on its own. Ten million dollars unlocking into a token with a hundred million circulating is a different event from the same ten million into a token with ten billion.

How to read it

• Cliffs and drips are different events: A cliff hands a large block to a few holders on one day and shows here as a tall bar and a high share of float. A drip hands small amounts to the same holders every day or month; each row is small, and the market has usually absorbed it already. The Cliffs filter keeps the rows at one percent of float or more.
• Read the share of float first: The Of float column is the unlock against circulating supply, amber from two percent and red from five. That is the column the board is built around; the dollar column is the same figure priced at today's quote.
• Set it against volume where you can: An unlock that is a fraction of a day's traded volume can be sold into the book without moving it; one that is several days of volume cannot. Volume is not on this page, so read the share of float with the token's turnover on an exchange.
• Watch the weeks before a large cliff, not the day: Prices have tended to drift lower into a large unlock as holders hedge, and to recover once the tokens are out and the overhang is known. The day of the unlock is usually the least informative day of the sequence.
• Open the schedule: A row opens the token's allocations: who is receiving the tokens, how much of each allocation is out, and on what terms. An investor cliff and a community programme cliff of the same size do not carry the same selling pressure.

What it cannot tell you

• One row per token. The list is each token's next unlock only. A token that unlocks daily appears once, with tomorrow's amount; its unlocks later in the fortnight are not in the two-week total. The strip is a floor, not a full accounting.
• Coverage: only tokens with a built schedule are tracked, a few hundred at a time. A token missing from the board has no published schedule, not no unlocks.
• Untracked supply is allocation that cannot be attributed to a schedule: a treasury the project spends at will, a foundation reserve, a programme with no published terms. It can be half the supply, and none of it appears on the calendar.
• Schedules change: Projects amend vesting terms, extend cliffs and re-lock allocations, and the board reflects the change when it is recorded. Dollar figures move with the price between refreshes.
• None of this is advice. An unlock is a date on which tokens become transferable. What the recipients do with them is not on this page.