What Is TGE, Vesting, Cliff and Unlock: Token Unlocks After an Airdrop

What is TGE, how a cliff differs from vesting, and why «receiving an allocation» and «receiving tokens» are not the same thing: after an airdrop, tokens rarely arrive all at once. Vesting, cliff and unlock are the rules by which a token's supply enters circulation — to the team, investors, the community and, quite often, the airdrop recipients themselves. This article explains the terms, shows how to read an unlock schedule, and where to find it.

This explains the mechanics of distributing tokens over time, not a price forecast and not advice on when to sell or buy. Vesting terms are specific to each project and can change. This is not financial or legal advice.

What TGE and listing are

TGE (Token Generation Event) is the moment a project's token is created on-chain and begins to exist as an asset: the contract is deployed, total supply is fixed, the first balances are distributed. Before TGE there is no token; there are only promises, points and allocation tables.

Listing is the token's appearance on a venue where it can be bought and sold: on a DEX through a liquidity pool, or on a centralized exchange. Listing usually happens on TGE day or shortly after, but they are different events: a token can exist without a market, and a market can open later.

Claim is the action by which an airdrop recipient collects their share: a call to the distribution contract, after which tokens arrive at the address. The claim often opens at the same time as TGE, but a project can delay it, limit it to a window or split it into parts. What the claim stage looks like in status terms and what to do at it is covered in the article on airdrop statuses.

It matters to separate three dates: when the token was created (TGE), when it can be traded (listing), and when you can actually collect your part (claim and unlocks).

Cliff and vesting in plain words

Vesting is the schedule on which locked tokens become available to their owner. It solves an obvious problem: if everyone gets everything at once, some holders sell on day one, and the market absorbs a shock the project would rather spread out.

• Cliff is the period after TGE during which nothing unlocks. For example, «a 12-month cliff» means the first token becomes available only after a year. A cliff is more often applied to the team and investors, so that their interests align with the long term.
• Linear vesting — after the cliff (or immediately from TGE) tokens unlock evenly: every day, week or month the same share becomes available until everything is unlocked. «24-month linear vesting» is one twenty-fourth per month.
• Discrete unlocks — tokens become available in portions on predefined dates: for example, a quarter at TGE, a quarter six months later, and so on. These dates are what is called an unlock, and they are what people track.
• TGE share is the percentage of the allocation available immediately at launch, before vesting begins. It can be zero, or it can be the entire allocation.

Schemes are combined: «10% at TGE, 6-month cliff, then 18 months linear» is a common phrasing in tokenomics. Read it literally: ten percent immediately, then six months of nothing, then one eighteenth of the remaining ninety percent per month.

Who receives tokens on a schedule, and how

Total supply is divided among recipient categories, and each usually has its own schedule. The reasons for the differences follow from the parties' interests.

Team and advisors. Usually the longest cliffs and vesting: the project shows that the founders cannot exit in the first months. This is a signal to investors and the community, not a gift to holders.

Investors. Cliff and vesting are usually shorter than the team's but longer than the community's. Early rounds that bought cheaper often have longer locks than later ones. Investor unlock dates are the ones most often discussed as a source of market supply.

Ecosystem and treasury. Tokens for grants, incentives and future programs. Vesting here is set by DAO or foundation policy and can change by vote.

Community and airdrop. This is where the spread is widest. Some projects release the airdrop allocation entirely at TGE. Some apply vesting to airdrop recipients too: a share immediately, the rest linearly over months, sometimes conditional on continued activity or on not selling what was received. This means the figure «your allocation» may refer to what you will receive over a year, not on claim day.

The practical conclusion: before claiming, read not only «how much» but also «when and under what conditions». Vesting for recipients is also a sign that the project is trying to retain users, not just hand out tokens.

Circulating supply and total supply

These two numbers are confused most often, and the difference between them is the essence of the whole topic.

Total supply is how many tokens exist or will exist under the contract's rules. For some projects it is fixed; for some it grows with emissions.

Circulating supply is how many tokens are actually available for trading right now: unlocked and not locked in vesting, locked staking or a treasury. At TGE, usually only a small share of total supply circulates; the rest arrives on schedules.

Why this matters. Valuing a project by price times circulating supply (market capitalization) and by price times total supply (fully diluted valuation, FDV) gives two different figures, and the gap between them shows how much supply is still to come to market. A project with a small circulating share and a large FDV is a project with many unlocks ahead. What to do with that is a matter of your strategy, not of this article; the goal here is to be able to read the numbers.

Where to find the unlock schedule

The primary source is the project's documentation: the «Tokenomics» or «Token distribution» section on the site, in the docs, or in the article published for TGE. It should contain a table of categories, shares, cliffs, vesting durations and, ideally, a timeline. If there is no table, only «details later», that is itself information about the project's maturity.

The second source is the vesting contracts in an explorer. Many projects use public contracts from which you can see how much is locked and when it unlocks; this lets you check whether the documentation matches reality.

The third is unlock schedule aggregators that collect data across many projects into one calendar. They are convenient but secondary: on a discrepancy, trust the contract and the documentation.

What to look at first in a schedule: the airdrop's TGE share and its vesting (this concerns you directly); the nearest large investor and team unlocks; the share already in circulation relative to the total. These three items are enough to understand what will happen to supply in the coming months — without forecasting where the price will go.

Understanding vesting is part of judging whether to participate at all: an allocation with a long lock and an allocation available immediately are different offers at the same number. How to build that judgment in full is covered in the article on whether an airdrop is worth it, and the basic concepts are in the article on what an airdrop is. A project's move to TGE and an open claim is reflected on CoinDropster as a status change to Reward available. See tracked airdrops →