A few weeks ago, Messari released their insightful report, “Don’t Look Down: Navigating Markets Around Cliff Unlocks,” which examines the market impact of increasing circulating supply.

This article highlights key findings from their research and provides additional context and recommendations for tracking unlock events.

Messari’s Report: Key Highlights

Messari’s analysts studied data from 619 unlock events across 41 assets to identify patterns in market reactions to increases in circulating supply. Most events involved increases of less than 2.5% of the circulating supply, while unlocks exceeding 5% accounted for less than half of all events.

Data source: Token Unlocks, as of September 16th

Tokens are rarely traded in isolation; their prices are influenced by factors such as market sentiment, new product launches, and narrative shifts. Although token unlocks typically have a negative effect on a token’s price relative to BTC, this is not always the case.

Nonetheless, certain patterns are worth noting:

• Unlocks of at least 5% of the circulating supply tend to significantly impact token performance.
• Underperformance of tokens often occurs within seven days before and after the unlock event.
• New product launches, sector outperformance, and other catalysts can override typical behaviors around unlock dates.
• Highly anticipated large unlocks can trigger unexpected market reactions.
• Tokens with large monthly unlocks struggle to outperform other altcoins over the long term.

Tracking Cliff Unlocks

For tracking unlocks, I usually use the Messari dashboard. However, other notable unlock trackers include Token Unlocks and DefiLlama.

On Messari, the most significant upcoming cliff unlocks include:

• $ONDO: 268% supply increase, in 3 months
• $OMNI: 154% supply increase, in 7 months
• $PRCL: 121% supply increase, in 7 months
• $JITO: 108% supply increase, in 2.5 months
• $TNSR: 96% supply increase, in 7 months
• $TIA: 83% supply increase, in 1.5 months
• $PYTH: 58% supply increase, in 8 months
• $PORTAL: 15.7% supply increase, in 2 weeks
• $MAV: 14.5% supply increase, in 3 weeks
• $ZETA: 11% supply increase, in 2 weeks

DeFillama complements this data with:

• $BIGTIME: 61% supply increase, in 3 weeks
• $CYBER: 69% supply increase, in 1 month
• $HOLD: 38% supply increase, in 2 months
• $LVL: 19% supply increase, in 3 months
• $BB: 100% supply increase, in 7 months

Tracking Inflation

Another important metric to track is daily token emissions and rate changes. Here, Messari proves to be very helpful again, with their Largest % Change Daily Linear Rate dashboard.

Notable events that will increase the inflation:

• $TIA to start emissions in 1.5 months
• $JITO to increase daily emissions by 8x in 3 months
• $DYM to increase daily emissions by 3.8x in 4.5 months

Notable events that will decrease the inflation:

• $UNI to stop new emissions this week, same as $RON and $XVS (next week).
• $WOO to cut emissions by 75% in 1.5 months
• $NEAR to cut emissions by 38% in 1 month

The first week of November will see the highest new emissions, with $1.4 billion entering the market, according to Token Unlocks.

Final thoughts

Token unlocks are one of many factors to consider when making investment or trading decisions. Other important factors include new product releases, overall market sentiment, and general liquidity. Often, the impact of unlocks is already priced in when the event occurs, making it an unreliable strategy to short tokens on unlock dates.

The most significant impact is seen when the unlock size exceeds 5-10% of the circulating supply and there are no upcoming catalysts or much attention around the token.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [Stacy in Dataland], Forward the Original Title‘Trading Token Unlocks: Essential Findings’, All copyrights belong to the original author [STACY MUUR]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.

2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.

3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.