Unlock Cadence

There is no standard way to unlock supply. Some tokens release continuously in seconds, minutes, days, weeks or months, while others run several different rates in parallel or stack multiple cliffs on the same date. Cadence is only the interval. It is a separate axis from the shape of the schedule, which describes whether a tranche is front-loaded, evenly distributed, or preceded by a cliff, and separate again from duration. Two tokens with identical allocations, identical lockups and identical end dates can produce charts that look nothing alike if one releases every block and the other releases four times a year.

Cadence also decides how a release is classified, which surprises people. Tokenomist defines linear emission by daily granularity: the continuous, daily release of a specific number of tokens, as opposed to cliff events occurring at wider intervals. That means a tranche vesting perfectly evenly on a monthly or quarterly rhythm is recorded as a series of cliff events, not as linear vesting, because the interval is wider than a day. A three-year quarterly schedule is twelve discrete releases. The distinction is not cosmetic: it determines which leaderboard a token appears on in monthly reports, and it reflects the market reality that a dated step and a daily drip are absorbed differently regardless of how the vesting document phrases them.

A single token usually runs several cadences at once, one per allocation. SPACE ID splits 2,000,000,000 ID nine ways. Advisors (140,000,000, 7%) and the Strategic Sale (160,000,000, 8%) take a one-year cliff followed by three-year quarterly vesting; the Seed Sale (400,000,000, 20%) and Core Team (300,000,000, 15%) take a one-year cliff followed by five-year quarterly vesting. Ecosystem (200,000,000, 10%, half unlocked at TGE) runs three-year monthly, Marketing (260,000,000, 13%, 10% at TGE) four-year monthly, Foundation (240,000,000, 12%, nothing at TGE) four-year monthly, and the Community Airdrop (200,000,000, 10%, 30% at TGE) two-year monthly. Those eight buckets are only 1,900,000,000 ID, 95% of supply. The ninth, Binance Launchpad (100,000,000, 5%), carries no cadence at all: it was 100% unlocked at the token generation event with no cliff and no vesting, so it resolved in 2023. The longest tail is six years from the March 2023 TGE, a one-year cliff plus five years of quarterly vesting on the Seed Sale and Core Team. The aggregate emission profile is therefore a monthly baseline with a quarterly spike layered over it, and none of that is visible from a headline describing the token as vesting for six years.

Because the intervals vary so widely, emission is normalised into fixed reporting windows so projects can be compared at all, and the windows on offer depend on the surface: a token's emission view carries All, +1D, +7D, +1M, +6M, +1Y and +4Y, while the Emission Screener exposes only 7D, 1M, 6M and 1Y. Summarising to a common time frame is what makes the analysis comparable across projects, but it creates one trap worth naming. The bucket is not the cadence. A monthly figure on a screener can describe a token releasing every block or a token releasing once. In July 2026 Bitcoin posted $876.22M at 0.07% of circulating supply, a month's worth of continuous issuance aggregated into one row, while Hyperliquid posted $690.55M in the same month as a single dated cliff, and the July report notes the 1.62% total-supply reading confirms it is part of a sustained multi-quarter schedule rather than a one-off. Same column, entirely different arrival. Check the cadence before treating any monthly number as a shock or as a drip.