Your unlock schedule is a promise. Write it like one.
A token schedule is not a spreadsheet exercise. It is a set of promises to people who will hold you to them in public, at the worst possible moment. Copying a schedule from a project you admire copies their assumptions too — including the ones that were wrong.
The four questions we ask before anyone opens a model. Who is being paid, and for what behaviour? What happens to the price of that behaviour when the token moves 80% in either direction? Who is contractually able to sell first, and will they? And what does the schedule look like read aloud in a hostile interview?
Cliffs are the most copied and least understood part of a design. A twelve-month cliff followed by a hard unlock does not align anyone — it sets a date for a fight. Linear release from day one, with a longer total term, usually produces calmer holders and a much less dramatic chart, at the cost of looking less generous in a deck.
Treasury is where most of the real risk sits, and it is almost never modelled honestly. If the plan assumes selling into strength to fund operations, say so before launch and size it. A treasury that has to sell during the first drawdown will do so at the exact moment it destroys confidence, and every holder will be able to see the wallet doing it.
What we hand over: the model, the argument against the model, and the three scenarios where it fails. If a design only survives the optimistic case, it is not a design — it is a hope with decimals.
A schedule nobody can defend out loud is not finished, no matter how good the chart looks.
Facing this now? Send a paragraph and we will tell you where we would start.
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