In June, the crypto market may see the release of locked cryptocurrencies worth nearly $875 million as the vesting periods for over 30 blockchain-based projects come to an end. Token Unlocks, a data tracker, reveals that the largest amount of tokens to be unlocked belongs to Aptos (APT), Arbitrum (ARB), Starknet (STRK), and Sui (SUI).
The practice of crypto vesting is commonly employed in the crypto space to prevent early token dumping by project team members and early investors. By utilizing various mechanisms, vesting ensures that crypto tokens cannot be sold all at once, thereby avoiding excessive pressure on the markets and potential declines in token prices.
The biggest token unlocks scheduled for June include the release of 92.65 million ARB tokens from the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum on June 16, valued at $105.6 million. Of this amount, approximately $64 million is allocated to the project’s team and advisers, while $41.6 million will be released for investors.
On March 16, Arbitrum initially released 1.1 billion ARB tokens worth $2.32 billion. However, the token’s price has since dropped by over 50%, from a high of $2.27 on March 8 to $1.13 at the time of writing.
In June, the layer-1 blockchain project Aptos will unlock 11.1 million APT tokens valued at $102.6 million. On June 12, the project will release $12.1 million in tokens for its foundation, $29.1 million for its community, $35.9 million for its core contributors, and $25.5 million for its investors.
Following these significant unlocks, the zero-knowledge proofs project Starknet will also release millions of tokens. On June 15, the ZK protocol will unlock 64 million STRK tokens worth $78 million for its early contributors and investors.
Similarly, the optimistic rollups project Optimism will unlock 31.34 million OP tokens, valued at approximately $78 million at the time of writing. The project had already released a similar amount of tokens for its core contributors and investors in May and will do the same in June.
On June 1, the layer-1 blockchain platform Sui will unlock 65 million tokens worth $66 million. These tokens will be released for its Series A and Series B investors, early contributors, Mysten Labs treasury, and community reserve. In May, the project had previously released around $1 billion in crypto tokens.
It is evident that the unlocking of these locked cryptocurrencies in June will have a significant impact on the crypto market.