Monad (MON) unlock on 24 November 2026: an estimated 16.6B MON as the insider lock ends

The first Monad unlock for insiders is due on 24 November 2026, one year after the network’s public mainnet. On that day the one-year lock on MON held by the team, by investors and by the Category Labs Treasury comes to an end. Two things are official. The Monad Foundation says released team tokens will represent about 10.7% of the initial supply at the first anniversary, and investor and treasury tokens follow a one-year cliff, then equal monthly unlocks of 1/48. Everything else, including the widely quoted total of about 16.6 billion MON, is an estimate built on those rules, not a figure the Foundation has published.

No time of day has been published, so Coindaro lists the event as an all-day date in UTC. It is the first time any locked insider MON can move.

What the Monad Foundation has published

The rules come from the Foundation’s MON tokenomics overview, published on 10 November 2025. The initial supply at mainnet launch was 100 billion MON. About 49.4 billion were unlocked on day one: 10.8 billion in public hands from the sale and the airdrop, plus roughly 38.5 billion for Ecosystem Development, which are unlocked but held by the Foundation and do not circulate.

The other 50.6 billion were locked. The Foundation wrote that all tokens in these categories “are locked for a minimum of one year following initial token distribution”. They fall into three groups.

Team: about 27 billion MON

This covers employees, founders and contractors of the Monad Foundation and Category Labs, the company that builds Monad. Each person vests over a period the Foundation describes as typically three to four years from their own start date, and a token has to be both vested and unlocked before it is released. People who joined early have already vested a share, held behind the lock, and that share comes out at once on the anniversary. The blog puts a figure on it: “At the 1-year anniversary of the launch, released team tokens will represent ~10.7% of initial token supply.” That is about 10.7 billion MON, and it is the only cliff amount the Foundation has stated.

Investors and the Category Labs Treasury

Investors from Category Labs’ earlier rounds (it was called Monad Labs then) hold about 19.7 billion MON. Their tokens have a four-year lock-up from launch “with a one-year cliff and equal (1/48) monthly unlocks thereafter”. The treasury, about 3.95 billion MON set aside for future staff pay, has the same schedule. For neither group does the blog give a token amount for the cliff.

All locked tokens are expected to be fully released by the fourth anniversary, in the fourth quarter of 2029. Until then, “Locked tokens cannot be staked”, so locked holders earn no staking rewards. The Foundation said it wanted those rewards to go to the public float first.

Monad unlock size: why 16.6 billion MON is an estimate

The usual reading of “one-year cliff, then 1/48 monthly” is that twelve months’ worth, or 12/48 (25%), is released at the cliff and the remaining 36 tranches follow monthly. Applied to the official allocations, that gives:

• team: about 10.7 billion MON (the Foundation’s own figure);
• investors: 25% of 19.7 billion, or about 4.925 billion (estimate);
• treasury: 25% of 3.95 billion, or about 0.99 billion (estimate).

Added up (10.7 + 4.925 + 0.9875), the estimated total is about 16.61 billion MON, or 16.6% of the 100 billion initial supply. It follows from the official rules, but the Foundation has not published it, and the actual release could differ.

Why trackers show 6.66B, 16.6B or 17.1B MON

Unlock trackers model the schedule themselves, and they do not agree. Every total below is an estimate; only the Foundation’s team figure is published. The figures were read on 16 October 2026, apart from Tokenomist’s note of 24 August 2026.

The biggest gap is the team. Tokenomist models all 27 billion team tokens as 36 equal monthly tranches starting at the anniversary, which gives only about 0.75 billion at the cliff. That ignores the Foundation’s 10.7% statement, and Tokenomist itself says the team figure is part of its model rather than a published number. Swap in the official team figure and Tokenomist’s total becomes 10.7 + 4.92 + 0.988, or about 16.6 billion.

The smaller gap, about 0.49 billion MON, is how the cliff is counted. DefiLlama‘s event list treats the cliff as 13 tranches (13/48) and then 35 monthly ones, which lands near 17.1 billion. One tranche of both groups is 23.65 billion divided by 48, or about 0.49 billion. DefiLlama’s own daily chart data uses 12/48 and shows about 16.63 billion, with the 13th tranche around 24 December. Tokenomics.com’s 16.61 billion matches the 12/48 reading. The German site CryptoTicker reached the same conclusion in September: the team tranche is the only firm number, and the 16.6 to 17.1 billion range is a modelling choice.

One more source of confusion is the denominator. DefiLlama shows about 16.8% because it divides by a maximum supply of 101.85 billion, which includes roughly 1.9 billion MON of staking rewards minted by mid-October 2026 (17.1 divided by 101.85 is 16.8%). Against the official 100 billion initial supply, the estimates range from 16.6% to 17.1%.

Larger than the MON supply now in circulation

Tokenomist showed 11.83 billion MON in circulation, 11.83% of supply, on 16 October 2026 at 13:58 UTC. An unlock of about 16.6 billion, if the estimate holds, would be about 1.4 times the whole current float. The official team tranche alone, 10.7 billion, equals about 90% of it. That gap between float and total supply is also why MON’s fully diluted valuation sits far above its circulating market cap.

Released does not mean sold. Team tokens remain tied to each person’s vesting, part of the release may stay in custody, and nobody outside the project knows how much will reach exchanges. “Unlocked” is not “circulating” either: the 38.5 billion Ecosystem Development tokens were unlocked on day one but are held by the Foundation, which the tokenomics overview counts outside public circulation.

How it compares with the ARB and TIA cliffs

Two earlier first-year cliffs give a sense of scale. Arbitrum released about 1.11 billion ARB on 16 March 2024, of which 673.5 million went to the team, future team and advisors and 438.25 million to investors. FXStreet put it at about 76.6% of the ARB circulating at the time, though other trackers gave figures from about 42% to 87% depending on the circulating supply they used. Monthly tranches followed until the final Arbitrum unlock in March 2027.

Celestia released about 175.6 million TIA on 30 October 2024, roughly 80 to 83% of its circulating supply depending on the source, then about 30 million TIA a month. Monad’s cliff, at an estimated 140% of the current float, is larger relative to circulation than either. That is a comparison of size, not a guide to what the MON price will do.

After 24 November: the monthly schedule

Under DefiLlama’s model, about 0.41 billion investor tokens and 0.082 billion treasury tokens are released each month after the cliff, while team vesting adds up to about 104 million MON a week until late 2029. That is roughly 0.94 billion MON a month in all (104 million × 52 ÷ 12, plus 0.41 and 0.082 billion). Tokenomist, with its smaller team tranche, models about 1.24 billion a month. Both are estimates. Released tokens should become stakeable, since only locked MON is excluded; the Foundation has not said so in as many words. On the staking side, the Monad documentation says delegators can claim rewards immediately and that unstaked MON can be withdrawn after one epoch.

From mainnet to the first anniversary

Monad is an EVM-compatible layer 1. Its public mainnet and the MON token launched on 24 November 2025. Beforehand, a team member had told The Block the launch was set for 9 a.m. ET, which is 14:00 UTC. “Developers shouldn’t have to choose between speed, security, and usability,” co-founder Keone Hon said on launch day, as quoted by The Block.

The public sale was the first on Coinbase’s new token sale platform. It offered up to 7.5 billion MON at $0.025 each, or about $187.5 million of tokens. The team reported about $269 million in commitments from 85,820 participants, according to The Block, so demand ran ahead of the tokens on offer. The airdrop accounted for about 3.3 billion MON. Readers who want to check the venue can see our Coinbase review.

Time of the unlock and what changes for holders in Europe and Africa

There is no official hour. If releases follow the mainnet anniversary, 14:00 UTC is 15:00 in Paris, Rome and Lagos and 17:00 in Nairobi on 24 November. DefiLlama dates the event at 05:48 UTC, which looks like a modelling artefact rather than a published time.

For people holding MON on a MiCA-licensed exchange or in a self-custody wallet, nothing changes in access: no regulatory step is involved and no action is needed from holders. What changes is the supply that could be traded.

What is still unknown

The exact investor and treasury cliff amounts (12/48 or 13/48) have not been published. Nor has the mechanism, an on-chain contract or a custodial release, or the hour. How much of the team’s 10.7 billion ends up on exchanges depends on individual lock-ups and vesting that are not public. Our glossary entry on the token unlock explains how cliffs and vesting work in general.