Allocators treat the unlock calendar as a CSV. Team, investors, ecosystem; cliffs and linear vest; a date and a token count. That file is a starting exhibit. It is not the schedule that hits the book.
The schedule you cannot download is the one that determines whether newly transferable tokens become sellable supply, stay immobilized by policy, or leak through a route the tracker never modelled.
What the public calendar actually is
A public vesting table is a statement of when transfer restrictions, on a subset of addresses, are intended to lift. It is usually assembled from a white paper, a token-generation event post, and a handful of on-chain locks. Third-party dashboards stitch those sources. They do not see side letters, OTC inventory, market-maker loans, or foundation “ecosystem” wallets that were never in the chart.
So the download is incomplete before you open it. The incompleteness is the diligence, not a data-quality footnote.
Transferable is not circulating, and circulating is not free float
Tokens can vest to a foundation and remain reserved. They can vest to a market maker under a loan that must be returned. They can vest to an investor who is still in a lockup that lives in a shareholders’ agreement, not in the contract. They can vest on-chain and sit behind a CEX deposit that the desk already pre-hedged.
The IC question is not “how many tokens unlock on Tuesday.” It is: which cohort receives them, under which document, with which tax and reporting constraint, into which venue, against which bid depth.
A cliff that looks large on a tracker can be economically quiet if the cohort cannot sell, will not sell, or sells only OTC. A small linear vest can be violent if it lands in thin books with a cohort that has already hedged and only needs to deliver.
The routes that never appear in the PNG
Inventory that was never locked. Advisors, contractors, and “community” allocations sometimes receive tokens at TGE with no contract lock. The calendar starts after the first silent float.
Market-maker and lending inventory. Borrowed tokens look like locked supply until they are sold and the loan is rolled. The vest date is then a refinancing event, not a first sale.
Points, airdrops, and retroactive programmes. These are unlocks by another name. They are rarely in the same table as investor cliffs. They still change free float and they still have a cohort with a cost basis of zero.
Governance-controlled treasuries. A wallet labelled “ecosystem” is a political object. The download cannot tell you the vote that moves it, or the quiet transfer to a new operational address.
Wrapped and bridged supply. The same token can be counted once on the home chain and again where it is used as collateral. Unlock math that ignores wrappers double-counts or under-counts at the exact moment a liquidation starts.
What to reconstruct instead of downloading
Start from addresses, not from the marketing schedule. Who received the TGE. Who still holds. What the contract lock actually enforces — time, cliff, or a revocable role. Whether a pause or a blacklist can stop an “unlocked” transfer.
Then read the documents the chain cannot show: investor rights, insider trading policies if they exist, foundation charters, and market-maker agreements if they have been disclosed. If they have not been disclosed, write that the economic schedule is partially off-chain. That sentence is a finding.
Then map venues. Unlock into a single thin pair is a different risk than unlock into a name that already trades as a funding-rate object. Depth is not a number you invent from memory. If you do not have a dated public book, describe the structure: permissioned, retail-only, or fragmented across wrappers.
Price is not the diligence
Public commentary treats unlocks as a reason the chart will fall. Sometimes the market has already moved; sometimes it has not. Hedgen does not turn that into a trade. The allocator’s job is to know the supply process well enough that a vest cannot surprise the risk system.
If the only artifact in the file is a downloaded PNG, the file is not finished. The unfinished part is usually where the loss will come from: a cohort that was never in the legend, a lock that was never in the contract, or a treasury that can move when a foundation decides the narrative needs liquidity.
Write the schedule you cannot download. Then the one you can download has a place.
