Glossary and FAQ
Every term on this site in plain English, and the questions people ask most.
Glossary
- Token unlock
- The moment locked coins become free to move and sell. Like the end of a lock-up on company shares: owners can sell from that day, though they don't have to.
- Vesting
- A schedule that releases someone's coins over time instead of all at once. Like a bonus paid in parts, so people stay with the project.
- Cliff (one-day unlock)
- A date when a big batch unlocks in one go, often after months of nothing. Picture a dam opening a gate rather than a tap dripping.
- Linear vesting (monthly)
- Coins unlock in small, steady amounts every day or block. On this site we add them up per month, so a “monthly” row is a monthly total, not a one-day event.
- Circulating supply
- Coins that are already out in the market and can be traded today. Locked or reserved coins don't count.
- Total supply
- All coins that exist right now, both circulating and still locked. Max supply is the cap that may ever exist.
- New supply (% of circulating)
- The size of an unlock compared with the coins already trading. 10% means one new coin arrives for every ten already on the market.
- Strength
- Our label for unlock size: Strong ≥ 10.4% of circulating, Medium 5–10.4%, Small under 5%. Strong means about a tenth of all coins on the market arrive in one day.
- Value (USD)
- Unlocking tokens × current price. It shows the money at stake, but not the impact: $50M is huge for a small coin and minor for a large one.
- Market cap and FDV
- Market cap = price × circulating supply. FDV (fully diluted valuation) = price × total supply: what the project would be worth if every coin were already out. A big gap between the two means a lot is still locked.
- Perpetual futures (“perps”)
- A contract that tracks a coin's price and has no end date. Traders use it to bet on a rise or a fall without owning the coin.
- Short
- A bet that the price will fall: you sell first and buy back later. If the price rises instead, you lose, and the loss has no fixed cap.
- Move vs BTC
- A coin's price change minus Bitcoin's change over the same days. It strips out the overall market mood, so we see what is specific to the unlock.
Questions people ask
What is a token unlock?
It's when coins that were locked, usually for the team, early investors or a project fund, become free to trade. The schedule is usually set at launch and is public. Unlocks can happen once (a cliff) or a little every day (linear).
Does the price always drop after an unlock?
No. Large studies find that most unlocks come with some price pressure, but plenty don't, and small unlocks look like noise in our data. Size relative to circulating supply, who receives the coins, and overall market mood all matter.
When does the price usually react, before or after?
Often before. Because the dates are public, traders tend to sell or short in the weeks ahead, and our numbers measure the 7 days before the unlock. By unlock day, much of the move may already have happened.
Who gets the unlocked tokens, and will they sell?
Usually team members, early investors, advisors or the project's treasury. Some sell right away, some hold, and some sell privately (OTC) so the trade never shows on the exchange. An unlock means they can sell, not that they will.
Where do these dates come from, and can they change?
We use the CoinMarketCap unlock calendar and DefiLlama emissions data, which come from project documents and on-chain contracts. Projects sometimes delay or change schedules, so check the project's own announcements before acting.
Should I sell, or short, before a big unlock?
We can't tell you that, and this is not financial advice. The pattern we see is an average across many coins, and any single coin can do the opposite. Shorting can lose more than you put in, so learn how it works first.
Why is the strong line exactly 10.4%?
It isn't a round number on purpose. It was chosen on the first part of our 305-unlock archive as the size above which price behaviour changed, then checked on the rest. Rounding it to 10% would have meant picking the line after seeing the answer.
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