What is a token unlock?

Short answer: A token unlock is the date when coins held by a team, investors or a treasury, locked under a public schedule, become free to sell.

When a project launches a token, most of the supply is usually locked: team and investor allocations, the ecosystem fund, future airdrops. These coins are released on a published schedule, and each release is a token unlock (also called a vesting release). Once unlocked, recipients can sell, so the supply on the market grows.

There are two kinds. A cliff releases a large batch on one day, often a year after launch. A linear unlock releases small amounts every day or every block. For price the cliff matters more: it is a known date when sellers can act at the same time.

The key is to compare an unlock not with dollars or total supply, but with the coins already trading (circulating supply). A $100M unlock into a $5B float is 2% new supply, close to noise. A $10M unlock into a $40M float is 25%. In our archive of 304 unlocks, the ones of at least 10.4% of circulating supply were weaker than Bitcoin in the week before the date in 68 of 100 cases.

Upcoming unlocks with their UTC time and size against circulating supply are on the calendar, the this week page and in the glossary. This is data, not financial advice.

Updated 2026-10-31 with the current archive. Not financial advice.

What is a token unlock?

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