Token Vesting Schedule Explained: Cliffs, Streams and Unlocks

A token vesting schedule is a timetable that controls when allocated tokens become available to their holders. Cliffs, linear streams and weekly unlocks are the common shapes. The schedule does not set the price, but it sets how fast new supply can reach the market.

Why vesting exists

If a team, investors and early buyers could all sell on day one, a new token would face its entire supply at once. Vesting spreads that out and aligns holders with the project’s long-term outcome. It is also a signal: a team that locks its own allocation is showing it expects the project to last.

Vesting is only useful if it is enforced, ideally by a public contract that you can read, not by a promise on a website.

Common schedule shapes

Shape	How it works	Market effect
Immediate unlock	All tokens claimable at launch	Largest, fastest potential supply
Cliff then lump	Nothing, then everything at once	A sharp event on the cliff date
Cliff then linear	Nothing, then steady release	Smooth but sizable after the cliff
Linear stream	Even release from day one	Steady, predictable supply
Weekly or monthly steps	Fixed chunks on a calendar	Visible unlock dates traders watch

BC1’s stated schedules

The whitepaper gives four schedules, which we compare here.

Bucket	Amount (BC1)	Stated schedule
Presale	8.4 billion	100% claimable at TGE
Liquidity	3.15 billion	Paired at launch; LP locked 12 months
Ecosystem	3.15 billion	Streamed over 36 months
Treasury	6.3 billion	52 weekly unlocks of about 121.15M from TGE, public vesting contract

The homepage adds that nothing unlocks before launch. Check the arithmetic: 6.3 billion divided by 52 is about 121.15 million, matching the stated weekly figure.

Key takeaway: Total supply tells you little. The unlock calendar tells you how much could be sold, and when.

How to model sell pressure

You do not need a trading background to build a simple model.

1. List each bucket and its release rule.
2. Convert each rule into tokens released per week.
3. Add the weekly totals to get potential new supply per week.
4. Compare against realistic demand, which you must estimate honestly.
5. Repeat with the assumption that holders sell different shares: 10%, 50%, 100%.

For BC1, treasury alone adds about 121.15 million tokens a week for 52 weeks, plus the ecosystem stream. Presale buyers can sell from the claim date. Those are potential flows, not predictions, because holders choose whether to sell. The buyback design, covered in token buyback and burn, is the main stated offset, and its size depends on app usage.

Questions vesting cannot answer

• Who controls the treasury? A vesting contract releases tokens to an address. What that address does with them is a separate question. The pages we reviewed did not describe treasury spending in detail.
• Can the contract be changed? An upgradeable vesting contract is less of a commitment.
• What happens to unclaimed tokens? Some schedules let unclaimed amounts accumulate.
• Is the lock verifiable? The project describes a public vesting contract; verify the address on-chain.

The risk page names concentration explicitly: the treasury holds 30% of supply, unlocked weekly over 52 weeks.

Reading a vesting claim critically

Phrases like “locked for two years” sound reassuring, but they can mean very different things. Locked by whom, in which contract, with what permissions? A lock controlled by a multisig of the team’s own keys is weaker than an immutable contract. Always ask for the contract address and look at the code or an independent review.

Also watch for “soft” vesting: promises made in marketing but not encoded in contracts. Those are intentions, not constraints.

Practical use

If you are evaluating any token, put the unlock calendar in a spreadsheet before you form a view. For the full picture on BC1’s split, read BC1 token supply and allocation, and if you are considering the presale, run the crypto presale checklist. You can also review the headline numbers on the bitcoin.one homepage. This is educational content, not investment advice.

A simple template you can copy

Open a spreadsheet with one row per week for the first year and one column per bucket. In the presale column, enter the full amount in week zero, then zero afterwards. In the treasury column, enter the weekly release, which for BC1 is about 121.15 million. In the ecosystem column, enter an even share of 3.15 billion across 156 weeks, noting that the even split is your assumption. Sum each row to see potential new supply that week, then add a column for your assumed share sold. The result is a rough picture of the supply wave, and it takes ten minutes.

The value of the exercise is comparison. Run the same template on two tokens and you will see that supply tables with similar totals can behave very differently. It also makes unlock dates visible, which matters because traders watch them. Keep the sheet and update it when the project confirms the real schedule.

What the project says in its own words

On the pages we reviewed, the project is consistent about the shape of the schedules and candid about the concentration risk. You can confirm the allocation on the bitcoin.one whitepaper, and compare the numbers with the lists in our supply and allocation article. Treat any figure that differs between sources as a prompt to check the contract.

Vesting and trust

A visible vesting contract is better than a promise, but it still depends on who deployed it, who can upgrade it and what the beneficiary address does with released tokens. Treat vesting as one signal among several: look also at the audit status, the clarity of the documentation and whether the team has been willing to answer hard questions in public. A schedule that looks generous on paper can be undone by a contract that its owner can change.

Final reminder

Everything above is general education drawn from the project’s public pages and standard industry concepts as of the date shown. Details change, pages are edited and roadmap dates move, so check current primary sources before acting, and never commit money you cannot afford to lose. If something in a project’s description cannot be verified independently, treat it as a claim rather than a fact, and wait until it can be.