August 2024 Token Unlocks: Avalanche, Wormhole, and Aptos Release $900 Million

• Over $900 million is set to be released in token unlocks this month, with Wormhole, Gala and ENA combining for a $164 million unlock in the next seven days alone.
• Avalanche has the month’s biggest unlock event—on August 20, it will release over 9.5 million tokens, valued at $250 million and representing 2.4% of its circulation.

Token unlocks have become increasingly common in crypto, and this month, the sector will witness one of its biggest releases yet. Some top projects, including Avalanche and Wormhole, are set to saturate the market with nearly $1 billion in new tokens in August.

Token unlocks can mark a significant event for any crypto, as our comprehensive guide explains.

The biggest unlock will be by Avalanche, the 12th largest crypto in the market. In just over 18 days, the project will release 9.54 million tokens, worth $251 million at current rates and equating to 2.42% of its circulating supply.

The last time Avalanche had a token unlock was on May 22, when it released a similar number of tokens, worth nearly $400 million at the prices then. In the week leading up to the unlock, AVAX surged 30% from $31.5 to a six-week high of $41.2. However, it has been downhill since then, and despite a resurgence late last month that pushed the token to $32.6, it has yet to recover.

This pattern has been consistent for Avalanche. In the month leading to its February 22 token unlock, AVAX climbed from $30 to $42.3 just days before the event. Once again, the unlock suppressed the prices, but since the rest of the market was in an uptrend, AVAX recovered fairly quickly to hit this year’s peak of $60.7.

AVAX changes hands at $24.77 at press time. In the past day, it has dipped 6.8%, almost twice the industry average of 3.9%, despite an upswing in trading volume. With a $9.781 billion market cap, it holds the 12th position on the charts, just ahead of Shiba Inu.

Wormhole, Avalanche and Aptos, Among the Other Major Unlocks

While Avalanche’s unlock is three weeks away, others will happen over the next week. One of these is Wormhole, which is set to release 600 million tokens on August 3. Wormhole’s unlock is very significant as it will unleash a third of the interoperability platform’s circulating supply of 1.8 billion tokens. It accounts for 6% of the total supply, which is capped at 10 billion W tokens.

As the project announced on social media, with the unlock, it will have released the entire 17% supply allocated to the community. It added:

These tokens will be held in trust by the Wormhole Foundation and will only be available for new community-related initiatives upcoming in the future.

https://t.co/9aqXBqB4X5

— Wormhole (@wormhole) August 1, 2024

After the August 3 event, Wormhole will have unlocked just a quarter of its supply. The Wormhole Foundation has only unlocked 3.8% of the 23.3% of tokens allocated, while ecosystem and incubation initiatives have only taken 5% of the 31% allocated.

Strategic network participants, core contributors, and guardian nodes have yet to unlock any of their allocated tokens, which collectively amount to 28.7% of the total supply or 2.8 billion W tokens.

Other projects with unlocks in August are The Sandbox, Aptos, and Arbitrum.