Token vesting calculator

What a token unlock schedule is

A token unlock schedule is the timetable that turns allocated tokens into liquid ones. Every allocation — team, investors, treasury, ecosystem, community — has three settings: how much is liquid at the token generation event, how long the cliff runs, and how long the remainder takes to release after that. Put those three numbers on every bucket and you have a schedule.

Fully diluted supply is a single number that never moves. Circulating supply is the number that changes, and it is the one that actually trades. A project can hold fully diluted supply constant for years while circulating supply multiplies. That is why the useful question is not “what is the total supply” but “how much of it is liquid this month, and how much becomes liquid next month”.

Cliffs matter more than the linear tail

A linear tail spreads a bucket over many months, so each month adds a small slice to the float. A cliff does the opposite: it holds everything back and then releases it in one month. When several buckets share a cliff date — teams often copy the same twelve-month cliff onto every allocation — those tranches land together.

The calculator surfaces this as “% of circulating”: the size of a month’s unlock divided by what was already circulating the month before. A tranche that is a small share of total supply can still be a large share of the float if the float is small. That ratio is what a treasurer, a market maker and a token holder are all actually asking about, and it is the number most unlock trackers do not show.

Vesting is a contract. Locking is code.

Vesting is a promise in a document: a grant agreement says a holder earns their tokens over time. Locking is enforcement on-chain: a contract holds the tokens and will not release them early, whatever anyone agrees to later. The two can disagree. Tokens can be contractually vested but sitting unlocked in a wallet, or locked in a contract whose release curve no longer matches the agreement anyone signed.

Teams that issued equity before they issued a token end up maintaining both ledgers. Shares vest on a board-approved schedule in a cap table; tokens vest on a different schedule enforced by a contract; the same person often holds both. Keeping them consistent is the real work — see the token vesting guide for the mechanics, and token cap tables for how the two ledgers sit side by side.

Allocation buckets and how they go wrong

How this is calculated

Every number on this page comes from the arithmetic below. Nothing is rounded before the maths, and bucket percentages are never rescaled — if they do not sum to 100 the calculator says so and leaves them alone.

• allocation = totalSupply × percentOfSupply ÷ 100
• tgeAmount = allocation × tgeUnlockPercent ÷ 100, released at month 0
• remainder = allocation − tgeAmount
• monthlyTranche = remainder ÷ linearUnlockMonths
• cumulative(m) = tgeAmount + remainder × min(max(m − cliffMonths, 0), linearUnlockMonths) ÷ linearUnlockMonths
• unlocked(m) = cumulative(m) − cumulative(m − 1)
• circulating(m) = sum of cumulative(m) across every bucket
• percentOfCirculating(m) = unlocked(m) ÷ circulating(m − 1) × 100

The cliff convention used here

The cliff month itself unlocks the cliff tranche; linear unlock begins the month after. So when a bucket has a linear tail, the whole remainder is that tail: months 1 through the cliff month release nothing, and the first tranche lands at cliff + 1, with the last at cliff + linear months. When a bucket has a cliff and no tail, the entire remainder is the cliff tranche and lands in one event at the cliff month. A bucket with no cliff and no tail is fully liquid at TGE. In every case a bucket is exactly fully unlocked at cliff + linear months, and cumulative unlocked never exceeds the allocation.

This is a modelling tool. It projects supply from the inputs you give it. It says nothing about price, and it is not investment advice.