What a token unlock schedule tells you.
An unlock schedule is the calendar of when tokens currently held in locks and vesting contracts become sellable. It's the most useful forward-looking information a token has, and it's fully public if a project used on-chain tools.
What it's made of
Two different shapes combine into one calendar:
- Locks release everything on a single date — a step. Typically used for LP.
- Vesting releases gradually over a period, sometimes after a cliff — a slope with an optional step at the start. Typically used for team, advisors and investors.
A project's unlock schedule is every one of these plotted together. The dates people watch are the steps: lock expiries and cliff dates, where a meaningful amount becomes sellable at once.
Reading one
Three things determine whether an upcoming unlock matters:
| Factor | What to look at |
|---|---|
| Size | The unlocking amount as a share of circulating supply, not of total |
| Absorbability | That amount against actual daily volume and pool depth |
| Whose it is | Team and investor unlocks behave differently from ecosystem ones |
An unlock worth 40% of circulating supply into a thin pool is a real event. The same percentage into deep liquidity, released monthly rather than at once, mostly isn't. Size alone tells you very little.
Why cliff dates are the ones to watch
A cliff releases everything accrued during the waiting period in one step. A twelve-month cliff on a large allocation means a single day where a year's worth of vesting becomes claimable simultaneously. That's visible to everyone in advance, which means it gets traded ahead of, often more than the actual selling would justify. How cliffs work.
This is an argument for staggering cliff dates across recipients rather than setting them all to the same day. The total released is identical; the concentration isn't.
Finding the schedule
If a project used on-chain locks and vesting, you don't need them to publish anything — the schedule is already public. On HoodLock, the explore page lists every lock and vesting schedule on Robinhood Chain with its dates and current state, and each has a proof page readable without a wallet. What a project chooses to publish and what the chain says should match; where they don't, the chain is the record.
If it's your token
Publish the schedule before anyone asks. Holders will construct it themselves from the chain regardless, and a version you didn't provide tends to be assumed worse than reality. Two things make it land well: stagger the cliffs so no single date dominates, and communicate ahead of the significant ones rather than after. What actually happens at expiry is less dramatic than most people assume — the problem is almost always silence rather than the unlock itself.
Common questions
What is a token unlock schedule?
The calendar of when tokens held in locks and vesting contracts become sellable. Locks release everything on one date; vesting releases gradually, sometimes after a cliff. Together they form the token's forward supply picture.
How do I find a token's unlock schedule?
If the project used on-chain locks and vesting, it is already public — every position has dates readable from the chain without the project publishing anything. Where a project's stated schedule and the chain disagree, the chain is the record.
Does a large unlock always crash the price?
No. What matters is the unlocking amount relative to circulating supply and actual liquidity depth, not the raw number. A large unlock into deep liquidity released gradually behaves very differently from the same amount hitting a thin pool at once.
Why do people watch cliff dates specifically?
Because a cliff releases everything accrued during the waiting period in a single step, creating one date where a large amount becomes claimable at once. Staggering cliffs across recipients releases the same total without concentrating it on one day.
Keep reading
- What happens when a lock expires
- Check a token now with the vesting checker
- What is a vesting cliff?
- Circulating vs total supply
- What happens when a lock expires
- Proof of lock
Every unlock date, publicly readable
Paste a contract address and see the vesting schedules HoodLock holds for it: total, cliff and end date. No wallet needed.
Check a token's vesting →