A vesting schedule is the timetable that controls when each allocation bucket can begin selling its tokens. It is not a legal formality. It is the most powerful tool a founder has for managing post-launch sell pressure, which is why we model it month by month across every bucket at once.
The danger only appears when all buckets are modeled together: a schedule that looks conservative in isolation can stack with others into months where several large buckets release at once.
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How it works
Three parameters define every schedule: the cliff, the vesting duration, and the release cadence. The cliff is the initial lockup when nothing releases. The duration is the period over which locked supply distributes after the cliff. The cadence is how often tokens release.
Monthly cadence is the standard. Daily release is technically possible on-chain but adds gas and operational overhead. Together these parameters set the shape of the unlock curve for each bucket.
Design consequence
A team bucket with an 18-month cliff and 36-month linear vest looks fine alone. But if the investor bucket has a 6-month cliff and 18-month vest, its unlock curve peaks well before team vesting ends.
Add a liquidity bootstrap bucket also releasing at month six and you get two buckets peaking together. That compounded sell pressure is the problem a single-bucket view never catches.
Common mistake
Founders treat the schedule as a deal term rather than a supply engineering decision. They negotiate each bucket with its counterparty, combine the tables, and are surprised to find three or four months where multiple large buckets release at once. Building the aggregate model before finalizing any single bucket prevents this entirely.
See Token Allocation and Vesting Design for how this applies in practice.
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