What is unlock?

The scheduled date on which previously locked tokens become transferable and can be sold.

Most tokens are not fully distributed at launch. Team allocations, investor rounds, ecosystem funds, and airdrop reserves are typically issued on a schedule, and until their date arrives those tokens exist in the total supply but cannot move. The unlock is the moment that changes.

The confusion worth clearing up is between an unlock and a sale. An unlock makes tokens transferable. Whether the holders receiving them sell, hold, stake, or lock them again is a separate question that the schedule cannot answer.

How it works

The schedule is set before launch and written into the token's distribution terms, usually enforced by a vesting contract that releases tokens on a timetable rather than by anyone's discretion. Because it is on chain, it is public, and analytics services publish calendars of upcoming unlocks across hundreds of tokens.

Two shapes dominate. A vesting cliff releases nothing until a date and then a large tranche at once, commonly one year after launch for team and investor allocations. Linear vesting releases a small amount continuously, often daily or monthly, over several years. Many schedules combine them: a one-year cliff followed by two or three years of linear release.

The effect on circulating supply is arithmetic. Tokens that were not circulating now are, so the same market capitalization is spread over more units, and the gap between market cap and fdv narrows. Whether price responds depends on demand at that moment, which nobody knows in advance.

What can be measured is scale. An unlock adding 2 percent to circulating supply is different from one adding 40 percent, and comparing the tranche against average daily trading volume gives a rough sense of how much absorption would be required.

Example

Illustrative. A token has 100 million circulating out of a 1 billion total supply, at $2, so a market cap of $200 million and a fully diluted valuation of $2 billion. Daily volume averages $5 million.

An unlock releases 50 million tokens, worth $100 million at the current price. Circulating supply rises 50 percent. The tranche is 20 times average daily volume, so even a fraction of it reaching the market would be large relative to what the book normally absorbs. Compare a schedule releasing 500,000 tokens a day, worth $1 million against $5 million of volume, which the market digests routinely.

Why it matters when you buy

Supply schedules are knowable in advance, unlike almost everything else about a token, so checking one costs a minute and removes a surprise. RampAtlas publishes unlock schedules by asset, a calendar of upcoming dates, and a ranking of coins by near-term unlock pressure.

Related terms

• lockup vesting: the schedule an unlock belongs to
• vesting cliff: the date before which nothing releases
• circulating supply: what an unlock increases
• fdv: valuation at full supply
• token generation event: when the schedule starts
• emission schedule: newly minted supply, a separate source

Questions

Where do I find a token's unlock schedule?

In the project's own tokenomics documentation and, more reliably, in the vesting contract on chain. Our unlock pages collect schedules for the assets we track.

Does an unlock always push the price down?

No. Recipients may hold, restake, or have hedged already, and the market has often priced the event well before the date. The observable fact is the supply change, not the price outcome.

What is the difference between an unlock and inflation?

An unlock releases tokens that already existed in the total supply. Inflation, or emission, mints new tokens that did not exist before. Both increase circulating supply and they come from different places.