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Token risks stem from unlocking expectations rather than VC allocations—this not only reveals the pain points of the current market structure but also further exposes the systemic imbalance in token economic design within the crypto industry.
This mechanism not only transforms the critical growth phase of projects into a 'selling pressure black hole' but also indirectly distorts the entire ecosystem's financing logic, investor behavior, and project sustainability.
1. Unlocking the expected amplification effect🔻
The original emphasis on unlocking periods transforms tokens into a 'supply game' from individual projects to market-level contagion, exemplified in the Hyperliquid case: despite its 'pure' structure without VC and pre-mining, which should have been immune to traditional selling pressure, the first team unlock in November 2025 still led to price volatility and narrative collapse.
Market data shows that prior to unlocking, the HYPE price benefited from scarcity and community faith, but immediately faced a 7% drop post-unlock, accompanied by $2.2 million in team wallet sell-offs and a continuous release of 10 million tokens per month, until October 2027.
This expectation is not limited to Hyperliquid but has become an industry contagion: similar projects like Blast or EigenLayer, despite strong fundamentals, also faced similar 'collective hedging' during unlocking periods—investors hesitated, liquidity dried up, leading to short-term fluctuations in TVL.
The unlocking mechanism amplifies market asymmetry; insiders have 'first sell rights', while retail investors are forced to act as 'bag holders'. In a bull market, this may be obscured by narratives; but in a bear market or volatile period, it accelerates the death spiral of projects. Data shows that between 2024 and 2025, over 30% of DeFi projects saw market value evaporate by more than 50% during peak unlocking periods.
This contagion effect further reinforces the status of the 'unlock calendar' as a pricing anchor, causing the entire market to shift from value investing to short-term speculative games.
2. Disruption of Project Financing Models🔻
The malignant cycle from VC dependence to the 'unlock trap' points out that even with restrained valuations, unlocking expectations still create selling pressure. This extends to a deeper industry paradox.
The current financing model (private placement + unlocking) is intended to provide early funding and alignment of incentives for projects, but in reality, it has created 'counter-incentives'—teams are forced to divert their attention to respond to market pressures during critical periods instead of focusing on product iteration.
Hyperliquid, as a benchmark for the 'anti-VC narrative', should demonstrate that success is possible without external capital, but its unlocking event exposes inherent contradictions:
Reasonable sell-offs by the team (for operations or risk mitigation) are interpreted as 'betrayals', leading to a weakening of community faith.
More broadly, this drives the industry towards 'Fair Launch' or 'no unlock' models, for example, emerging Layer2 projects like Taiko or Scroll in 2025, which avoid traditional unlocking through community airdrops and instant full circulation, but this also introduces new risks: initial liquidity shortages or 'rugs'.
The unlocking mechanism is forcing a reshaping of the financing ecosystem—VCs may turn to 'perpetual lock' clauses or performance-bound unlocking, while project teams explore DAO governance to disperse selling pressure expectations. Otherwise, quality projects will continue to 'self-harm' during growth phases; data shows that the average user growth rate of projects during unlocking periods is only 60% of that during non-unlocking periods, as resources are used for public relations and buybacks rather than innovation.
3. Long-term Alienation of Investor Behavior🔻
From holders to 'opportunists', the original text describes the unlocking period as a phase of 'hostility towards new buyers', which extends to a deep impact on investor psychology: market participants increasingly evolve into 'opportunists', prioritizing the monitoring of the unlocking calendar over fundamental analysis. The case of Hyperliquid reinforces this transition—despite its strong user base and founder mythology, the market immediately returned to the 'selling pressure formula' post-unlock, ignoring the platform's actual adoption rate (with trading volume in 2025 exceeding traditional CEX).
This is not just behavioral bias but structural inducement; a publicly transparent unlocking calendar (like release schedules on CoinMarketCap) makes selling pressure a 'predictable risk', and rational investors naturally choose to wait, leading to a lack of buying during critical periods. Extending to a macro level, this alienates the essence of tokens as 'capital assets', instead viewing them as 'option-style speculative products'—similar to the 'lock-up stock' effect in the stock market, but crypto's decentralized nature amplifies volatility (no regulatory buffer).
The result is a shortening of the entire industry's investment cycle and a reduction in long-term holders; data shows that the average holding period of crypto funds in 2025 has decreased to 9 months from 18 months in 2023. This, in turn, worsens project financing: quality teams, to avoid 'unlock stigma', may turn to equity financing or traditional VCs, but this again undermines the ideals of decentralization.
4. Potential Solutions and Future Outlook🔻
Breaking the structural shackles of the unlocking era, although the original text does not propose solutions, its diagnosis paves the way for reform.
The industry needs to start from institutional design and explore 'dynamic unlocking' mechanisms: for example, conditionally releasing based on project milestones (like user numbers or revenue), or introducing 'reinvestment mandates'—teams must repurchase and burn a portion of unlocked tokens.
This has already taken shape in Hyperliquid's response: it alleviates short-term pressure through aggressive buybacks and restaking, but in the long run, more aggressive reforms are needed, such as a 'perpetual lock fund'.
Another path is regulatory intervention: after 2025, if the SEC strengthens token classification, unlocking mechanisms may need to meet 'fair disclosure' standards, reducing information asymmetry. At the same time, the evolution of Web3 may give rise to 'no-token' models, but this challenges the core narrative of crypto.
Ultimately, Hyperliquid is not a 'failed control group', but a catalyst—its experience proves that if the unlocking issue is not resolved, it will continue to suppress the industry's transition from speculation to mature capital markets. Data shows that projects adopting low unlocking models (like Bitcoin's no pre-mining) perform better than high unlockers in the long term, hinting at future trends: a greater focus on sustainable deflation rather than inflated supply.
📍In summary, the unlocking mechanism is not just a technical detail, but the 'original sin' of the crypto ecosystem—it creates volatility in the short term and hinders capital formation in the long term. If the industry can learn lessons from cases like Hyperliquid and shift towards incentive-aligned designs, it may reshape tokens into truly sustainable investment tools rather than fleeting narrative bubbles.