Vesting
In short Vesting locks tokens given to teams, investors, or presale buyers and releases them gradually over time instead of all at once.
Vesting is a schedule that controls when allocated tokens become available to their owners. Team members, advisors, private investors, and sometimes presale buyers receive tokens that are locked at first and released in portions over months or years. The aim is to stop insiders from selling everything as soon as trading begins.
Most schedules combine a cliff with a linear release. A typical setup might be a 12 month cliff, during which nothing unlocks, followed by monthly or even per-block releases over the next 24 to 36 months. Some schedules unlock a percentage at the token generation event, then vest the rest. The tokens are ideally held in a vesting smart contract that releases them automatically, rather than in a team wallet backed only by a promise.
For holders, vesting matters because every unlock adds sellable supply. Circulating supply can grow far faster than demand, and large cliff unlocks often coincide with price drops as investors take profit. A token can look cheap by market cap while its fully diluted valuation, which counts tokens still locked, tells a very different story.
Check the tokenomics for each allocation's cliff and release schedule, and compare upcoming unlocks with the token's trading volume and liquidity. Then verify onchain: find the vesting contract in a block explorer and confirm it actually holds the tokens and enforces the terms. If team or investor tokens sit in an ordinary wallet that can transfer them anytime, the stated vesting is only a promise.