Token Unlocks Explained: Cliffs, Calendars and Price Impact

A token unlock is the date when locked crypto tokens, usually held by a project's team, early investors, foundation or ecosystem fund, become free to transfer and sell. Unlocks follow a published vesting schedule, either as one large release at the end of a cliff or as small regular tranches, and they add to the supply that can reach the market.

This guide explains how unlocks work, what the research says about their effect on price, how to read an unlock schedule without being misled by supply numbers, where to track upcoming unlocks, and which large unlocks are scheduled for the rest of 2026, including SUI. For the basic definitions, see our short explainers on cliff vesting and tokenomics.

What is a token unlock?

Projects rarely release their whole supply on day one. Most of it goes to groups expected to wait: the team, the funds that financed it, a foundation and reserves for future incentives. Those allocations are locked by a smart contract, a custodian or a legal agreement, and released over time according to a vesting schedule.

Each release is an unlock. The tokens already counted towards total supply, but until the unlock they couldn't be moved. After it, the recipient can hold, stake or sell them.

Three questions tell you most of what you need about any single unlock:

• Who receives the tokens? A team member, a venture fund, a foundation treasury and an airdrop recipient behave very differently.
• How big is it relative to what already circulates? 50 million tokens is noise for one project and a flood for another.
• Is it a one-off cliff or a routine monthly tranche? Markets usually see routine tranches coming months in advance.

Cliff unlocks vs linear unlocks

Most real schedules combine two pieces.

Cliff unlocks

A cliff is a waiting period during which nothing unlocks, followed by a single release. A typical pattern is a one-year cliff from the token launch. When the cliff ends, everything that would have vested during that year is released at once. Our cliff vesting explainer walks through a worked example.

Linear unlocks

After the cliff, the remaining tokens usually unlock in equal slices, often monthly, sometimes daily or per block. Each slice is small compared with the cliff, but the slices add up and they keep coming for years.

Arbitrum is a clean example. Its foundation docs state that all team and investor tokens are subject to four-year lockups, with the first unlocks one year after the 16 March 2023 token launch and monthly unlocks for the remaining three years. Monad uses the same shape for investors: a four-year lock-up with a one-year cliff and equal 1/48 monthly unlocks after it.

Do token unlocks move the price?

The best-known dataset is from market maker Keyrock, which studied more than 16,000 unlock events across 40 tokens. It looked at daily prices for 30 days before and after each event, measured against ETH to strip out market-wide moves. Its main findings:

• About 90% of unlocks created negative price pressure, regardless of size or type.
• The effect often started around 30 days before the unlock and prices tended to stabilise within about 14 days after it.
• Team unlocks were the worst, which Keyrock put at around −25%. Investor unlocks showed slower, smaller declines, which it attributed to hedging ahead of time.
• Ecosystem-development unlocks were one of the few groups with a positive average effect, about +1.18%.
• Bigger unlocks led to sharper drops and more volatility.

Read those results carefully. They describe averages across many tokens, not a forecast for the next one. Keyrock doesn't publish significance tests or sample sizes for every category, and some of its figures, such as the team result, don't state the exact window. An unlock to a treasury that never sells may change nothing.

The practical lesson: if selling pressure exists, it tends to show up in the weeks before the date, and it is strongest when tokens go to people with a reason to sell.

How to read an unlock schedule

An unlock chart can look alarming or harmless depending on which supply number it is compared with. Four numbers matter, and our FDV vs market cap guide covers the valuation side in more depth.

• Total or maximum supply. Every token that exists or ever will. SUI, for example, has a fixed 10 billion.
• Unlocked supply. Tokens that are no longer subject to vesting. This is what most unlock trackers chart.
• Circulating supply. Tokens counted as available to the market. Projects and data sites define this differently.
• Fully diluted valuation (FDV). Price multiplied by total supply. A large gap between FDV and market cap means a lot of supply is still to come.

The gap between the second and third numbers catches people out. Tokens that vest into a foundation treasury or a community reserve are unlocked under the schedule, but the holder may keep them for years. SUI shows the difference clearly. On 12 October 2026, DefiLlama's model counted roughly 7.26 billion SUI as unlocked, while the Sui Foundation's own API put October's month-end circulating supply at about 4.12 billion. Neither figure is wrong. They measure different things.

When you look at an upcoming unlock, size it against circulating supply, not total supply, and check who the recipient is. A monthly tranche that has repeated for two years is a known quantity. The first cliff after launch is not.

Where to track upcoming token unlocks

You don't need to build schedules yourself. Several free trackers publish unlock calendars:

• DefiLlama Unlocks lists token unlocks and vesting schedules, broken down by allocation. Its underlying schedule data is publicly downloadable.
• Tokenomist grew out of the TokenUnlocks dashboard and shows unlock events, allocation categories and the share of supply affected.

Treat every tracker as a model. They rebuild schedules from whitepapers, blog posts and on-chain contracts, and they sometimes disagree on the exact day or the size of a tranche. Before you act on a date, check the project's own documentation. While researching this guide, we found DefiLlama's model placing Arbitrum's monthly tranche on the 15th, a day before the 16th that the official schedule counts from.

Notable unlocks for November and December 2026

Three large scheduled unlocks we could check against both a tracker and the project's own documentation. Dates are UTC and approximate to within a day; amounts are token counts, not dollar values.

The Monad event stands out because it is a first cliff. Monad's mainnet launched on 24 November 2025, and the Monad Foundation says all team tokens are locked for the first year after launch, with released team tokens equal to about 10.7% of initial supply at the one-year anniversary. It is the kind of unlock Keyrock's research flags: large, early and partly going to insiders. That doesn't mean the price will fall, only that the schedule is worth reading in advance.

Arbitrum's tranches are the opposite case. They have repeated every month since March 2024, and the Arbitrum Foundation docs indicate they finish around March 2027, three years after the first unlock.

SUI's unlock schedule

The Sui Foundation published its planned release schedule in June 2023 and maintains a public circulation API with month-end figures. As of 12 October 2026, that API shows:

• October 2026: about 4,118 million SUI circulating, 41.18% of supply
• November 2026: about 4,139 million (+20.8 million)
• December 2026: about 4,160 million (+20.6 million)

The Foundation says the schedule is subject to adjustment, so treat future months as planned figures, not guarantees.

DefiLlama's model, which cites the same Sui blog post, shows the vesting side. Tranches of about 58.6 million SUI from the Community Reserve and 23.8 million SUI from the Mysten Labs Treasury unlock at the start of each month. In 2026 it also models a monthly Early Contributors tranche of about 55.6 million SUI that ends in the autumn. The model's event list and its daily series disagree on whether a November tranche remains, so check a tracker before 1 November if that matters to you.

For anyone holding SUI or a liquid staking token such as JWLSUI, unlocks affect the price of SUI. They don't change how staking or liquid staking works. Staking rewards are paid in SUI regardless, and our Sui liquid staking comparison covers those mechanics.

Frequently asked questions

What is a token unlock in crypto?

A token unlock is the moment tokens that were locked under a vesting schedule become transferable. They usually belong to the team, early investors, a foundation treasury or an ecosystem fund. Unlocks can happen all at once at the end of a cliff, or in small linear tranches every month or block.

Do token unlocks always make the price drop?

No, but they often coincide with weakness. Keyrock's study of more than 16,000 unlock events across 40 tokens found that about 90% created negative price pressure, with team unlocks the worst and ecosystem-development unlocks slightly positive on average. The study measured prices against ETH, and it describes tendencies, not a rule for any single token.

What is the difference between a cliff unlock and a linear unlock?

A cliff unlock releases a large block of tokens on one date after a waiting period, often one year. A linear unlock releases the same small amount at regular intervals, such as monthly or daily. Many schedules combine both: a one-year cliff followed by monthly unlocks for the next three years.

Where can I find a token unlock calendar?

DefiLlama's Unlocks page and Tokenomist (which grew out of the TokenUnlocks dashboard) both list upcoming unlocks with dates, amounts and allocation categories. For the final word, check the project's own tokenomics page or documentation, because trackers model schedules and sometimes disagree on exact days.

When does SUI unlock?

SUI unlocks monthly. DefiLlama's model of the Sui schedule shows tranches from the Community Reserve (about 58.6 million SUI) and the Mysten Labs Treasury (about 23.8 million SUI) at the start of each month through late 2026. The Sui Foundation also publishes its own month-end circulating supply through a public API, which showed about 4.12 billion SUI, or 41.18% of the 10 billion supply, for October 2026.

Are unlocked tokens the same as circulating supply?

Not always. Unlocked means the tokens are free to move under the vesting schedule. Circulating usually means tokens a tracker or the project counts as available to the market, and tokens that vest into a foundation treasury or reserve may still be held. That is why two sites can show very different numbers for the same token.

Keep reading

• Cliff vesting in crypto: meaning and example
• What is tokenomics? How to read a token's economics
• FDV vs market cap: fully diluted valuation explained
• What is Sui?
• How to check a DeFi protocol is safe

This article is educational and is not financial advice. Unlock dates and amounts are as of 12 October 2026, taken from the Sui Foundation circulation API, the Arbitrum Foundation docs, the Monad Foundation tokenomics overview and DefiLlama's public unlock schedules. Price-impact findings are from Keyrock's unlock study. Schedules can change, so check the project's own documentation before acting.