When a token has a team allocation, early backers or a big reserve, those tokens are usually held back for a while. The day they are released is called an unlock. If you hold a token, it is worth knowing when its unlocks happen and how big they are, because a lot of new supply arriving at once can change things for everyone holding it.
What a token unlock is
Most projects split their supply into parts: some for sale, some for the team, some for a reserve or for rewards. To stop insiders selling straight away, the team and reserve parts are often locked and released over time. That release plan is called vesting.
There are two common shapes:
- A cliff. Nothing is released for a set time, then a large amount unlocks at once.
- Linear vesting. Tokens are released a little at a time, often every day or every month.
A cliff is easier to understand but can mean a lot of tokens arriving on one day. Linear vesting spreads it out.
Why it matters
An unlock does not mean anyone will sell. But it changes who can sell, and how much. If a big share of the supply becomes free to move on one day, it is reasonable to want to know who holds it and what they have said they will do with it.
A promise is not a lock
This is the part most people skip. A whitepaper that says “team tokens are locked for two years” is a promise. A lock is something you can see on the blockchain: the tokens sit in a vesting contract whose code only lets them out on the stated schedule.
To check any token on Polygon:
- Find the token on Polygonscan and open the Holders tab.
- Look at the biggest wallets. Is each one an ordinary wallet, or a contract?
- If it is a contract, open it and read what it does. A vesting contract will show release dates and amounts.
- Compare what you find with what the project says. If they say the team tokens are locked but they sit in an ordinary wallet, they are not locked.
Where BLK’s supply sits today
I would rather show you this than have you find it yourself.
BLK has a fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 and no mint function, so no more can ever be created. The whitepaper splits it into a 70% Investment Reserve, 10% Liquidity Reserve, 8% Team and Founders, 7% Reserved Pool (staking under review) and 5% Community Incentives. The BLK sold in the presale, up to about 15 million, comes out of the Investment Reserve.
Those parts have not been moved into separate wallets or vesting contracts yet. Apart from what is in the presale contract, they all sit in the owner wallet, which is a single Ledger hardware wallet I hold. The whitepaper describes multisig escrow and release schedules for the team and the reserve. Neither exists on the blockchain yet. They stay on the Ledger on purpose for now, because a hardware wallet key never touches the internet.
So if you are judging BLK on unlocks, judge it on that: today the supply is controlled by one key, not by a vesting contract. The trust page reads where every BLK is from the blockchain each time you open it, and shows everything the owner key can and cannot do.
BLK is a utility token. It has no guaranteed value, pays no rent or dividends, and cannot be traded until it is listed on an exchange. Only buy what you can afford to lose.
