The Sui Network (SUI) will unlock nearly $300 million worth of its native token on January 1, 2025. This is part of Sui tokenomics and monthly unlock schedule that inflates SUI’s circulating supply and dilutes investors’ holdings.
Finbold has been monitoring and reporting Sui cliff unlocks according to data from Tokenomist. For example, December 1 saw Sui’s largest unlock in U.S. dollar value to date due to SUI’s ongoing price increase, unlocking $224 million worth of 64.19 million tokens.
The phenomenon is set to repeat on 2025’s first day if SUI continues trading close to its current level. Indeed, the usual 64.19 million SUI unlock currently holds a nominal value of $274.11 million. This will artificially increase Sui’s circulating supply and market capitalization by 2.19% after the token unlock.
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Interestingly, there are still 1.85 billion SUI locked in vested contracts with a scheduled unlock. Over 5.22 billion of locked SUI tokens are not yet scheduled, classified as “TBD locked” by Tokenomist.
Nearly $600 million of token unlocks next week
Overall, “Cliff Unlocks” data from Tokenomist also shows that $581.95 million will be unlocked by 43 cryptocurrency projects in the next seven days. Other projects with significant unlocks are Optimism (OP) and ImmutableX (IMX), with $60.80 million and $36.04 million, respectively.
Yet, SUI still represents the largest share, unlocking approximately 50% of all cliff unlocks for the upcoming week.
SUI tokenomics and market effects
Sui Series A and B investors receive the most, getting over 19 million SUI each, for 61% of the total. Mysten Labs gets the remaining 25.03 million, reserving 12.63 million for the community, 10.34 million for early contributors, and 2.07 million for its treasury.
So far, the Sui Network has already unlocked 29% of its maximum capped supply of 10 billion SUI. At $4.27 per token, the “Solana-killer” has a fully diluted value (FDV) of $42.70 billion. This is a similar value to Circle’s USDC circulating market cap by press time.
Notably, each time the network unlocks more tokens, it increases the potential selling pressure and artificially inflates the market cap.
An increasing supply requires a similar, or better, increased demand to sustain its prices, according to the laws of economics. This is why Sui’s largest cliff unlock to date represents a first-moment threat to SUI investors, diluting their holdings’ value.
Furthermore, Sui has a unique tokenomics, which allows Mysten Labs and Series A/B investors to stake their locked tokens. These positions generate asymmetric liquid rewards against other staking investors, allowing these entities to sell these rewards or compound their staking positions over time.
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