Guide · Basics
What Is a Token Unlock Schedule? The Supply Cliff Crypto Charts Don't Show
A large share of a crypto token's total supply is often locked at launch and released gradually — and the specific schedule of when it unlocks can matter more to price than almost anything else.
Most new crypto tokens don't launch with their entire total supply immediately tradable. Large allocations — to the founding team, early venture investors, and the project's own treasury — are typically locked under a vesting schedule and released gradually over months or years, a structure meant to align long-term incentives and prevent insiders from immediately selling into the initial hype.
The specific shape of that schedule matters enormously. A "cliff" is a period where nothing unlocks at all, followed by a sudden, large release all at once — a token with a 12-month cliff, for example, unlocks nothing for a year, then a potentially enormous chunk of supply becomes sellable in a single day. A linear vesting schedule instead releases a small, steady amount continuously (daily or monthly), spreading the same total supply increase out over time instead of concentrating it into one date.
Because a large unlock meaningfully increases the tradable supply of a token without any change to demand, it functions as a predictable, calendar-visible source of potential selling pressure — sophisticated traders and funds openly track upcoming unlock dates for exactly this reason, and a token's price has, in many documented cases, drifted down in the days leading into a large scheduled unlock even with no other negative news.
An unlock schedule isn't published on a price chart — it takes checking a project's own tokenomics documentation to find — but factoring it in before trading a newer token is exactly the kind of due diligence worth practicing on Trade2Spike before it's a real position with real money riding on a date you didn't know was coming.