Token unlocking is the process when previously locked tokens are released for free trading.
Most crypto projects don't release all their tokens at the start. A large part stays locked for months or years after launch. They are reserved for early investors, the founding team, ecosystem development, and future incentives. These tokens are released on a schedule known as the vesting plan.
How token unlocks affect the price, how you can benefit from it, and what projects unlock soon – read in this article.
Upcoming Token Unlocks in the Last Week of June
Keyrock's analysis of over 16,000 token unlock events found that 90% create negative price pressure. The decline typically begins around 30 days before the unlock date, when traders and institutional investors front-run the expected supply increase.
These 3 projects unlock their tokens in June. And every case is separate. Let's look more closely at each case to get an idea of how it will affect the price.
Humanity Protocol Token Unlock
Humanity Protocol ($H) is a digital identity layer for Web3. Project aims to verify that users are not bots using palm scans and social credentials, then make that identity portable across services.
Validators who maintain the system and verify identities earn $H as a reward.
$H Vesting Schedule
Pro Tip: A cliff is a waiting period during which no tokens are released at all. Once the cliff ends, a large portion unlocks at once.
Category
Share
Unlocked at TGE
Cliff
Vesting
Ecosystem Fund
24%
0%
0
48 months
Early Contributors (Team)
19%
0%
12 months
24 months
Identity Verification Rewards
18%
0%
6 months
42 months
Community Incentives
12%
100%
0
0
Foundation Operations Treasury
12%
50%
0
48 months
Investors
10%
0%
12 months
18 months
Human Institute Strategic Reserves
5%
5%
12 months
18 months
On June 25, a scheduled unlock released approximately 266.5 million H tokens (~$36M) into circulation, about 9.41% of the circulating supply.
Ahead of the event, the Humanity Foundation gave investors an ultimatum: either extend their vesting by three years or accept an immediate unlock at a 70% discount.
The offer signaled that the Foundation expected selling pressure. The market read it the same way. The token dropped 20% in the 24 hours before the unlock, breaking below the $0.199 support level.
The timing was especially brutal because the Humanity protocol had just been hacked. On June 8–9, an attacker compromised a developer's machine with malware and extracted seven private keys. The attacker drained roughly 447 million tokens in total.
After the hack, $H crashed 80–90% within 12 hours, bottoming out near $0.07. A sharp bounce followed — the token surged 210% in a single day to $0.627 — but selling pressure resumed ahead of the June 25 unlock, pushing the price back down to the $0.13–0.21 range.
Humanity Protocol case proves that token unlocks don't exist in a vacuum. On their own, a 2.7% of total supply release and a 12-month investor cliff are manageable events. But when an unlock arrives days after a huge exploit that shattered trust in the project's key management, the supply increase lands on a market that has no confidence left to absorb it.
Sahara AI Token Unlock
Sahara AI ($SAHARA) is a decentralized AI ecosystem. The platform includes a data services platform, an AI marketplace, and an agent deployment layer. The SAHARA token powers everything from paying for AI inference to validator staking and governance.
Token distribution
Category
Share
Ecosystem Development
33.93%
Community Incentives
20.75%
Early Backers (investors)
19.75%
Core Team & Contributors
15.00%
Airdrops (Knowledge Drop, Binance HODLer, OKX)
8.15%
Buidlpad Community Distribution
1.42%
Liquidity & Market Stability
1.00%
Team, advisors, and early backers follow a 4-year vesting schedule with a 1-year cliff: 25% unlocks at 12 months, then monthly over the following 36 months.
Around June 28, approximately 1.03 billion SAHARA tokens are set to enter circulation, roughly 30.1% of the circulating supply, worth about $14.75 million.
The team is actively trying to soften the blow. Shortly before the unlock, Sahara AI announced two big moves. First, investor unlocks pushed back by 3 months (to September 2026), and founder/team/advisor unlocks delayed by 6 months (to December 2026). Second, the project outlined a revenue-funded buyback program.
Following the news $SAHARA jumped 21% in a single day, and trading volume surged 342% to over $124 million. The bounce came after a 60% crash over the prior two weeks. The token was still trading near $0.013, below its June low and far from its pre-crash levels.
The team is doing the right things on paper. These are exactly the moves that can build confidence ahead of a large unlock. But a 1.03 billion token release landing on a price chart that's still in a downtrend and hasn't recovered from a recent crash is a real stress test.
History says most unlocks push prices lower, but history also says context matters more than the event itself. If you're watching Sahara's development closely, this could be a pattern worth keeping in mind.
Plasma ($XPL) is a Layer 1 blockchain built for stablecoin payments. Plasma offers zero-fee USDT transfers and a paymaster system that lets users pay gas in stablecoins.
Token distribution
Category
Share
Vesting
Ecosystem & Growth
40%
8% at launch, rest monthly over 3 years
Team
25%
1-year cliff (Sept 25, 2026), then monthly over 2 years
Investors
25%
1-year cliff (Sept 25, 2026), then monthly over 2 years
Public Sale
10%
Non-US unlocked at mainnet; US buyers locked until July 28, 2026
Airdrop
1%
—
On June 25, Plasma unlocks 88.89 million XPL tokens from the Ecosystem & Growth allocation, worth roughly $7.7–10.4 million. That's 0.89% of the total supply and about 3.56% of the circulating supply. By itself, this is a routine monthly release. It's going to ecosystem development. On paper, this is the least threatening type of unlock.
What makes Plasma interesting right now is the calendar ahead. On July 28, US public sale participants see their 12-month lockup expire. That's 1 billion XPL, 10% of total supply, becoming tradable in a single day. Then on September 25, the one-year cliff for team and investors expires, beginning a two-year linear unlock of 5 billion XPL combined (50% of total supply).
These are the events that will actually test the market.
On June 17, Plasma launched Plasma One, a stablecoin neobank with a Visa card, cashback tiers, and stablecoin yield. The launch triggered a 20% price rally. Two days later, XPL pulled back 11%.
This week's unlock alone is unlikely to move the price in a meaningful way. It's small and ecosystem-targeted, and the market has seen identical monthly releases before. But it's worth watching how XPL handles even minor supply additions right now.
If this routine release causes noticeable weakness, it may say something about how thin demand really is ahead of the much larger July and September cliffs. If it passes cleanly, that's a signal the market can absorb what's coming.
The next 90 days will tell us more about Plasma's resilience than any single event this week.
What Token Unlocks Actually Tell You
These three cases show the same event producing very different outcomes depending on context.
Humanity Protocol's unlock landed on a broken market. The hack had already destroyed confidence, and the new supply had no demand to meet it. The unlock didn't cause the crash, but it made recovery harder.
Sahara AI is fighting an uphill battle, the team made the right moves ahead of the unlock. Whether that's enough to offset a 1.03 billion token release on a chart that's still in a downtrend is something the market will decide in real time.
Plasma's current unlock barely registers on its own. But the two major cliff events in July and September will release billions of tokens. This week is a preview before the main event.
The pattern across all three is the same. The size of an unlock matters less than the environment it enters.
If you hold or plan to buy a token with an upcoming unlock, the questions worth asking are simple.
How large is the release relative to what's already circulating?
Who receives the tokens – and are they likely to sell?
What is the project doing to manage the supply pressure?
And most importantly, does the market have enough confidence and liquidity to absorb the new tokens at current prices?
Unlock calendars are public. In a market full of unpredictable events, token unlocks are one of the few things you can actually prepare for.
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