Vesting cliff

A vesting cliff is the initial waiting period before any locked tokens or shares start unlocking, with zero released until that date hits. It matters to readers checking a project's tokenomics because a long cliff signals the team can't dump early, but it also means insiders get a lump sum all at once when it ends, which can hit the price hard. For example, a token with a one-year cliff and four-year vesting gives founders nothing for twelve months, then releases 25% of their allocation in a single day, followed by monthly unlocks for the remaining three years. Always check the cliff date, not just the total vesting length, before judging supply risk.