Do Token Unlocks Push Prices Down? What the Data Says

Studies of 236 to 16,000+ token unlocks agree most price pressure comes before the unlock date, and size against float matters most. The data, with sources.

By Cryptolaxy Research · Nov 10, 2026 · 6 min read

On average, yes, but not in the way most people expect. The published studies agree that tokens tend to underperform around unlocks, that most of the weakness shows up in the weeks before the unlock date rather than on the day, and that the size of the unlock relative to the tradable float matters more than the dollar amount. Several large datasets also show that many unlocks are too small to matter at all.

Upcoming unlocks, with size and recipient for each, are on the token unlocks calendar.

What the studies measured

Four sources have published results you can check. They differ in sample, period and benchmark, so their numbers are not directly comparable.

The first three measure price. The fourth measures scale, and its authors say so: "share of volume measures scale, not realized price impact."

Does the price drop on the unlock day or before it?

Before. This is the most consistent finding across the sources.

• Keyrock: "Token price impacts often start 30 days before the unlock event." For large unlocks, the decline accelerates in the final week, and after the unlock "prices tend to stabilise within roughly 14 days."
• Messari: relative underperformance "mainly occurs in a window seven days before and seven days after the event."
• Tokenomist: the median move in the month before an unlock is -14.7% (n=164, p < 0.001), and -9.1% over the two weeks before. Its conclusion: "the main risk window is the month before the unlock rather than the day itself."

Keyrock gives two reasons. Large allocations often go to sophisticated recipients who hedge through market makers, and "most firms, including ours, start hedging 1-2 weeks or even a month before depending on the size." The sharper drop in the final week it attributes to retail traders selling ahead of the date.

Does the size of the unlock matter?

Yes, but measured against the right base.

• Against circulating supply. Messari puts the threshold at 5%: "Cliff unlocks of at least 5% of circulating supply tend to have the most noticeable impact on token relative performance." Smaller cliffs have noisier effects that product launches and other news can easily outweigh.
• Against float, for new tokens. Tokenomist finds that the effect splits by age. For established tokens the matched-peer median is -2.57% and not statistically significant (p=0.42). For newly listed tokens it is -16.02%. In their words, "the variable carrying the effect is unlock size relative to a thin float, not whether the recipient is labelled an insider."
• Against daily volume. The Tie found 95.6% of 2026 unlocks in its data came in below a single day's trading volume. Only 544 of 12,350 exceeded a full day's volume.

Bigger is not worse without limit. Keyrock reports that "bigger unlocks lead to sharper price drops (2.4x)", but also that "Huge Unlocks (>10% of supply) perform as well or even better than Large Unlocks (5%-10%)". Keyrock suggests releases that large cannot be fully hedged or unwound within 30 days.

Do team unlocks hit harder than investor unlocks?

The sources disagree.

Keyrock splits events by recipient: "Team unlocks trigger the worst crashes (-25%)", investor unlocks "exhibit controlled price performances" (with data from 106 investor events showing "slow, minimal price declines"), and "Ecosystem development unlocks are among the few with positive effects (+1.18% on average)."

Tokenomist finds the recipient label adds little once you control for size against float. The Tie adds context on scale: of at least $21B unlocked across its 101 tokens in 2026, investor allocations were "$780 million of it, under 4%."

The two findings do not have to conflict: if team unlocks tend to be large relative to a young token's float, they would show up as the worst category in a split by recipient. Neither study tests this directly.

Cliff or linear: which is worse?

Only Keyrock tests this directly: "Linear unlocks outperform initial cliff unlocks in reducing short-term disruption, though larger cliffs often recover better after 30 days." It also finds that once unlocks are scaled for size, "frequency emerges as the more telling factor": a steady run of monthly releases keeps weighing on price. Messari adds that "it is difficult for tokens with large monthly cliff unlocks to outperform other altcoins on longer time horizons."

What the data does not tell you

• Averages, not forecasts. Tokenomist found 72.5% of its 236 events closed lower a month later, which also means 27.5% did not. Any single unlock can go either way.
• Benchmarks change the answer. Tokenomist's raw median is -16.26% against BTC; against matched peer tokens it shrinks to -4.85%. Most of the raw drop is shared by comparable tokens that had no unlock.
• Methods are not always shown. Keyrock's 90% and 2.4x figures appear in its key takeaways without the calculation behind them, and Keyrock is a market maker that sells hedging services. Messari's full report is paywalled. Tokenomist describes its readings as covering a single market cycle.

How to read an upcoming unlock

Put the studies together and four numbers tell you most of what is knowable in advance:

1. Size vs circulating supply, not total supply. Above 5% is where Messari sees a clear effect.
2. Size vs daily volume. The Tie's own screen keeps only unlocks worth more than a quarter of a day's volume in tokens trading $30M+ a day, which cut its 2026 calendar to 27 events.
3. Token age. Tokenomist's effect is concentrated in newly listed tokens with thin floats.
4. Cliff or linear, and who receives it.

Example: Allora, Nov 11, 2026. About 160M ALLO unlock in one cliff: 33% of the backer (31.05% of supply) and early contributor (17.5%) allocations, after a 12-month lock (Allora tokenomics). Against the 1B total supply that is 16%. Against circulating supply it is larger. Both allocations, 48.55% of supply, have been fully locked until now, so at most 514.5M ALLO can be circulating. The cliff is therefore at least 31% of the current float, our calculation from the published allocations, far above Messari's 5% line. The token is also one year from its TGE, which puts it closer to Tokenomist's newer-token group than to an established one. None of this predicts the price; it places the event in the part of the data where effects were largest.

Example: Pieverse, Nov 14, 2026. The 12-month lockup ends for team and advisors (20% of supply) and investors (15%), and linear vesting starts. The project has not published the first monthly amount, so its size against float cannot be computed yet.

Where to track unlocks

• Token unlocks calendar: every unlock we track, with size and recipient.
• Token Unlocks in November 2026 and December 2026.

Each event page links to the project's own tokenomics source. When a team changes a schedule, the page is updated.