In July, cryptocurrency tokens valued at $755 million will be unlocked as the vesting periods for over 40 projects come to an end.

Crypto vesting prevents early investors and team members from selling their tokens by locking them down. This mechanism helps prevent a price downturn during the early phases of a crypto project.

Vesting data tracker Token Unlocks highlighted that the largest amount of crypto assets to be unlocked in July 2024 belongs to AltLayer (ALT), Xai (XAI), Aptos (APT), Arbitrum (ARB), Optimism (OP), Sui (SUI), Immutable (IMX) and Starknet (STRK).

Biggest token unlocks in July

Decentralized protocol AltLayer will unlock the biggest chunk of tokens in July. On July 25, the project is set to release 684 million ALT tokens worth about $125 million. The tokens are allocated to its team, investors, advisers, protocol development, treasury ecosystem and community.

Gaming-focused project Xai is set to release the second-largest amount, with about $93 million in tokens scheduled to unlock on July 9. Like AltLayer, the crypto assets are for its team, investors and ecosystem. About $2 million in tokens are also allocated to its reserves.

ALT's token price is currently around $0.18, whereas XAI is valued at $0.46.

Projects regularly unlocking tokens

Aptos, which unlocked $101 million in May and $102 million in June, will release another batch of tokens in July. The project will release 11.31 million APT tokens worth $77 million in July. These are allocated to its foundation, community, core contributors and investors.

Aptos token’s 3-month price chart. Source: CoinGecko

In the last three months, APT’s price went down from a high of $17.63 on April 1 to $6.99 on June 28, representing a 60% drop from April to June.

Meanwhile, Arbitrum, which released $95 million in May and $105 million in June, is scheduled to drop another $75 million in tokens for its team, advisers and investors on July 16. The project also released 1.1 billion ARB tokens worth $2.32 billion on March 16.

Since the huge unlock, ARB prices have dropped by 63%, from a high of $2.27 on March 8 to $0.82 at the time of writing.

Optimism, Sui, Immutable and Starknet, which unlocked millions worth of their native tokens in the last two months, will also unlock similar amounts in July.