In May, the cryptocurrency market is set to witness the release of over $3.1 billion worth of vested crypto assets. This practice of vesting is implemented to encourage long-term commitment to crypto projects, as it prevents early investors and team members from quickly selling off their tokens and abandoning the project.
Among the various projects unveiling their vested crypto assets, Sui, a layer-1 blockchain platform, will release the largest amount. On May 31, Sui is expected to unlock nearly one billion tokens for its Series A and Series B investors, early contributors, the Mysten Labs treasury, and its community reserve. These tokens are valued at approximately $1.15 billion.
Pyth Network, a market data platform, will release the second-largest amount of tokens in May. On May 20, the project will unlock over two billion tokens for protocol development, ecosystem growth, publisher rewards, and its private sale investors. With the current value of Pyth Network’s token at around $0.51, these tokens are worth approximately $1.1 billion.
In addition to Sui and Pyth Network, several other projects will also release a combined total of over $700 million in tokens. Avalanche, Aptos, Arbitrum, Starknet, Optimism, and Immutable are among these projects. Aptos will release 11.3 million APT tokens worth $101 million, while Avalanche will unlock 9.5 million AVAX tokens valued at around $321 million. Arbitrum will release $95 million in ARB tokens, Starknet will unlock $84 million in tokens, and Immutable will release $56 million in crypto tokens. Lastly, Optimism will unlock 24.1 million OP tokens worth about $70 million.
It is worth noting that some of these projects have already released significant amounts of tokens in the past. Arbitrum, for example, released $2.3 billion in tokens on March 16, 2023, while Optimism released $587 million in OP tokens in May 2023.
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