Vesting
Vesting locks an allocation of tokens onchain and releases it gradually instead of all at once - for your own supply, your team's, or a contributor's. Schedules release evenly over time, can start with a cliff, and last a minimum of 14 days.
How a schedule works
Every vesting schedule has the same shape:
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Beneficiary | The wallet that will receive the tokens. |
| Start | When vesting begins. Must be at or after the time of creation. |
| Cliff | The earliest moment anything can be released. Set equal to the start time for no cliff. |
| Duration | The total vest length. Minimum 14 days. |
| Slice period | The granularity of releases. A 30-day vest with a 1-day slice releases in 30 even chunks; with a 1-second slice it streams essentially continuously. |
| Total amount | The total tokens that will eventually unlock to the beneficiary. |
Inside the schedule, vesting is linear: the amount available at any time is the total amount scaled by the fraction of the duration that has elapsed since the start, rounded down to the nearest slice. Nothing is releasable before the cliff. Once the duration has fully elapsed, the entire total is available.
Creating schedules
Schedules can be created in bulk: one transaction can set up vesting for a whole team at once. You provide the list of recipients and how much each gets; everyone in the batch shares the same start, cliff, duration, and release cadence. The tokens move into the vesting contract's custody for the life of the schedule.
Releasing
Only the beneficiary can release their own tokens. Releasing at any point after the cliff sends whatever has unlocked since last time straight to their wallet. Before the cliff, nothing can be released at all.
A beneficiary can release as often as they like - there's no penalty for waiting and no deadline. Most people either collect at the end, once the schedule is fully vested, or on a regular rhythm matching the release cadence.
Vesting works before graduation too
A token can't be sent wallet-to-wallet while it's still on its curve - but vesting is the one exception. Vested allocations can be set up and held from day one, which means a creator can lock their initial buy on a schedule immediately, before the token has graduated and before anyone has had to take their word for it.
Use cases
- Creator self-vesting - buy your own supply at launch and immediately vest it over six months. It's the most credible way to say you're not going anywhere, because it isn't a promise.
- Team and contributor allocations - split a treasury across several wallets in one transaction.
- Cliffed bonuses - a 12-month schedule with a 6-month cliff, for someone who needs to still be around at the cliff date.
There is no cancel button and no recovery path, for anyone. Once tokens are committed to a schedule, the only way out is the beneficiary releasing them as they unlock.