Vesting Schedule
A vesting schedule is the timetable that defines when, and in what amounts, locked tokens are released to their owners. It tells you how much new supply can reach the market, and when.
Why tokens are locked at all
When a crypto project launches, a large part of its tokens usually belongs to insiders: founders, developers, early investors, advisors and a treasury. If all of them could sell on day one, the price could collapse and insiders could walk away early. Vesting means those tokens are granted but locked, and they become transferable only step by step.
The schedule is normally set out in the project's tokenomics documents and, in better cases, enforced by a smart contract rather than by a promise.
The building blocks: cliff, unlock and duration
Most schedules combine three elements. The start date is often the token generation event (TGE), the day the token first exists and trades. A cliff is a waiting period during which nothing is released. After the cliff, tokens unlock either in one block, in regular tranches such as monthly or quarterly, or continuously in tiny amounts, known as linear vesting.
Different groups get different terms. Public sale buyers may receive most tokens at launch, while the team might have a one-year cliff followed by three years of monthly releases.
A worked example
Say a project has 1,000,000,000 tokens and gives 150,000,000 to early investors with a 12-month cliff and 24 months of monthly vesting after that. For the first year, none of those tokens can move. From month 13 on, 6,250,000 tokens unlock each month until month 36. If only 200,000,000 tokens circulate at launch, each monthly release adds about 3% to the circulating supply at first, which is meaningful.
What to check and where it goes wrong
Look up who receives what, how long the cliff is, and how large the biggest single unlocks are compared with the current circulating supply. Check whether the locks are enforced on-chain and whether the contract can be changed by an admin key.
Common mistakes are assuming that an unlock must push the price down, or that it never matters. Recipients do not have to sell, and expected unlocks are often partly priced in. But a big cliff unlock in a thinly traded token can add heavy selling pressure, and schedules are sometimes amended after launch.
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Frequently asked questions
What happens when tokens unlock?
The unlocked tokens become transferable, so their owners can hold, stake or sell them. An unlock increases the supply that could be sold, not the supply that will be sold.
Where can I find a token's vesting schedule?
Start with the project's official tokenomics page or whitepaper, then compare it with on-chain vesting contracts and independent token unlock trackers. If you cannot find it at all, treat that as a warning sign.
Is a longer vesting schedule better?
Longer vesting generally ties insiders to the project for longer and spreads out new supply. It does not make a token safe on its own, and the size of each release matters as much as the length.
Related terms
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