Zama (ZAMA) unlock on 2 February 2027: an estimated 550M tokens as the insider cliff ends

The first Zama token unlock for its team and investors is due on or about 2 February 2027, one year after ZAMA started trading. Under the distribution rules in the Zama protocol litepaper, the team, venture investors and angels each receive one tenth of their allocation when a one-year cliff ends. Worked out from those official percentages, that comes to 550 million ZAMA, or 5% of the 11 billion token supply. The figure is our calculation, not one published by Zama.

Tokenomist, in its update of 08:07 UTC on 23 October 2026, priced ZAMA at $0.077; at that price 550 million tokens come to about $42 million. The same tracker counted 2.55 billion ZAMA in circulation, so the cliff would add roughly 21.6% to the float in one day.

Why 2 February 2027 is a derived date

Zama has not published a calendar day for the cliff. The litepaper gives a duration, one year, and the clock starts at the token generation event. Zama’s announcement of the public auction set 2 February as the day to claim tokens and refunds, and KuCoin opened ZAMA trading on 2 February 2026 at 13:00 UTC, according to its listing notice. Add twelve months and you reach 2 February 2027.

Tokenomics.com, Tokenomist and DropsTab all place the insider unlock on that day. None of them gives an hour, and neither does Zama, so the event is listed here as an all-day item in UTC. Until Zama confirms the schedule or the tokens move on-chain, both the day and the size remain estimates.

Zama tokenomics: who is locked and for how long

Zama describes itself as an open source cryptography company. According to the litepaper, it was founded in 2020 by Rand Hindi, its CEO, and Pascal Paillier, its CTO. Its field is fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), a technique that lets software compute on data while it stays encrypted. The Zama Protocol applies it as a cross-chain confidentiality layer on top of existing blockchains, not as a new layer 1 or layer 2, so that token balances and transfers can stay private on public networks.

The litepaper splits the supply into eight buckets. About 20% was meant to circulate at launch: the public sale (12%), TGE campaigns (6%) and liquidity (2%), none of them locked. The rest follows two patterns. If the vocabulary is new, our tokenomics explainer covers how allocations and vesting fit together.

The token counts are our arithmetic: the litepaper gives percentages only, and the 11 billion total comes from the auction announcement, which based its $55 million floor valuation on that supply. Treasury and Growth have no cliff and have been releasing since launch. On 23 October DropsTab showed 35.17% of the Treasury and 16.83% of Growth already unlocked, against 0% for the three insider buckets.

550M or 664.6M ZAMA: why the trackers disagree

Two numbers circulate for the same day. DropsTab lists 220 million for the team, 220 million for VCs and 110 million for angels: 550 million ZAMA in total, exactly the litepaper arithmetic.

Tokenomics.com shows a larger event, 664.6 million ZAMA (about 6% of supply), split between private investors (50%), insiders (33%) and the foundation (17%). It does not explain the difference. The gap is 114.6 million tokens, the same size as the foundation-only releases the tracker lists for 2 November 2026, 2 December and 2 January 2027.

Our calculation, not a statement by any tracker or by Zama: the 2 February figure looks like the 550 million cliff plus one of those monthly foundation releases, because both fall on the 2nd. The split supports this reading. 114.6 million is 17% of 664.6 million, the foundation’s share; 330 million for VCs and angels is 50%, and 220 million for the team is 33%. The 114.6 million also matches one month of Treasury (2.2 billion over 24 months, about 91.7 million) plus one month of Growth (1.1 billion over 48 months, about 22.9 million), but only if both vest in equal monthly steps, which the litepaper does not say.

Read that way, the cliff for team, VCs and angels is about 550 million ZAMA and the whole day about 664.6 million. Tokenomist names angels as recipients of its next event and keeps the amount behind a paywall.

What happens after the cliff

Only one tenth of each insider bucket comes out on the cliff day. The other nine tenths stay locked and vest later, so roughly 4.95 billion ZAMA from these three groups remains on the schedule after February 2027. The litepaper gives the total lockup (four years for the team, two for VCs and angels) but not the release rate after the cliff. The trackers read it differently: DropsTab models the team over 36 months of linear vesting, Tokenomics.com over 48. We give no monthly figure until Zama publishes one.

Other cliffs we follow are built differently. Our page on the Allora (ALLO) unlock on 11 November 2026 covers a cliff that releases 33% of two insider allocations at once, and the Ondo unlock in January 2027 is another case where trackers and the official schedule give different totals.

How ZAMA reached the market in February 2026

ZAMA was sold through a single-price, sealed-bid Dutch auction on Ethereum mainnet. Bidding ran from 21 to 24 January 2026, with a floor of $55 million fully diluted, or $0.005 a token. Bid prices were public and quantities private, and Zama says the clearing price was computed with FHE on the encrypted bids. The auction took 8% of supply; a sale at the floor to holders of its OG NFTs and a post-auction sale at the clearing price added 2% each.

The results come from Zama’s own announcement, distributed as a Chainwire press release on 27 January 2026, and not from an independent check: a clearing price of $0.05, 880 million tokens sold and 11,103 bidders. KuCoin’s notes on its own allocation also use the $0.05 clearing price.

Since launch, the only unlocks have been the continuous Treasury and Growth releases. On 23 October DropsTab counted 28.72% of the supply unlocked and 71.28% still locked. February 2027 is the first time the team and venture investors can receive any tokens.

What the unlock means for holders in Europe and elsewhere

A token unlock changes who is able to sell, not what anyone will do. Recipients may hold, stake, sell or move tokens to exchanges, and none of the groups has said what it plans. What can be measured is size: about 21.6% of the circulating float on Tokenomist’s count, or 5% of total supply.

The other figure readers will see is the gap between market capitalisation and fully diluted valuation. In its 08:07 UTC update on 23 October 2026 Tokenomist put the first at $195.68 million and the second at about $847 million, a measure of how much of the 11 billion tokens is still locked. Coindaro gives no view on the price; this page reports the schedule.

What is still unknown

Zama has published no post on the February cliff and no time of day. We found no public vesting contract address and no sign that any bucket’s schedule has changed since launch. The post-cliff rate and the recipients’ plans will be clear only when Zama or the transfers themselves show them. We will update this page if the date or the amounts change.