How to Set Up Token Vesting on Monad

A lock tells the market when your tokens stop being frozen. A schedule tells it what you intend to do for the next three years — a different quality of statement, on a chain whose counterparties are lending desks.

What is token vesting on Monad, and how is it different from a lock?

Token vesting is an on-chain schedule that releases a fixed allocation to a named recipient in increments across a defined term, where a lock immobilises a quantity until one date and then releases all of it at once. Both are enforced by contract rather than by promise, and neither can be shortened by the party it constrains. The difference is the release curve: a lock has one step, a schedule has many.

That changes what each is good for. A lock is a commitment device — correct when an allocation should simply not move, and when the honest answer to what happens on the unlock date is “all of it becomes available”. A schedule is a compensation mechanism — correct when tokens are earned over a term, released against a runway, or staged to an investor. Team token locks on Monad covers the single-date instrument; most funded protocols run both.

Why does a schedule read as more credible than one long lock?

Because a schedule demonstrates a plan and a lock demonstrates a pause, and a sophisticated counterparty is buying the plan. A five-year lock on a founder allocation proves the tokens are immobile; it says nothing about what happens in year five, when the entire position becomes available on a single day that the whole market can see coming. The commitment is real and the ending is unmanaged.

A schedule replaces that cliff-edge with a curve. It says founders are compensated across the period they are expected to work, that supply enters circulation at a rate the market can absorb, and that somebody thought about release against delivery. One unlock date sends none of those signals.

The case for the long lock deserves conceding: for a reserve held against a defined event, a single date accurately describes the intent. The failure mode is choosing the lock because it is simpler, then calling it a distribution plan.

What does MON’s own float say about how this market reads unlocks?

Monad is a market where unlock overhang is already a visible, actively-priced variable, so a published release schedule lands on readers fluent in exactly this arithmetic. CoinGecko reports MON circulating at roughly 11.83B of 100.68B total supply as of September 2026 — approximately a 12% float — against a fully diluted valuation of $2.6B, with the token at $0.02582 and 47.3% below its all-time high of $0.04883 set on November 26, 2025. These are single-source figures and should be re-verified against a live quote before being relied upon.

Read that as market structure and nothing else. A low initial float paired with a long-dated release is a common and defensible design, adopted by networks that distribute over years rather than months. The point for a builder is not what it says about Monad; it is what it says about the audience.

An ecosystem whose participants routinely model the gap between circulating and fully diluted supply is one where your own gap is already being modelled — by lending desks sizing haircuts, by allocators building a supply curve for your token whether or not you publish one. Publishing the schedule is the difference between supplying that number and having it estimated.

What are the standard vesting shapes, and who does each suit?

Three shapes cover nearly every allocation: a cliff, a linear release, and a cliff followed by a linear release. Each answers a different question about when a recipient has earned what they hold.

A cliff releases nothing until a set date, then a defined tranche in one step, which suits milestone-conditioned grants. A linear release streams tokens in even increments from day one, and suits treasury drawdown against runway and staged investor tranches. Cliff-then-linear waits out an initial period, releases a first tranche, then streams the remainder — the standard for employees, founders and advisors, because it encodes two ideas: nothing is earned before a proving period, everything after is earned continuously.

Choosing the shape is the easy half. Setting the cliff length, the term and the release frequency requires judgement, and vesting schedules for Monad projects works through both.

How should founder, team, advisor and treasury allocations be sized?

Size each allocation against the horizon its recipient is being asked to commit to, and vest the whole of it rather than a defensible-looking fraction. The four categories carry different logics, and treating them as one pool is the most common structural error on a young cap table.

Founder allocations are the longest-dated, because founders are the party whose commitment everyone else underwrites. Team allocations track employment, so the shape usually mirrors an equity vest. Advisor grants are the smallest and shortest, and should track an engagement term, not a title. Treasury is most often mishandled, because it is not compensation at all: it funds operations, incentives and liquidity, so its release should follow a spending plan.

Two rules hold across all four. Vest the whole allocation — a schedule covering 40% of a position under an announcement reading team tokens vesting creates the exact credibility problem it was meant to solve. And stagger the end dates.

What does a published vesting schedule signal in diligence?

It signals that the team has already answered the questions a diligence reader was about to ask, which shortens the conversation. Monad’s total value locked stands at $957.23M as of September 2026 and sits with lending, yield and structured-credit protocols — Aave V3 at $320.94M, K3 Capital at $310.9M, Euler V2 at $241.67M, Pendle at $221.76M and Morpho Blue at $172.96M.

Such a reader extracts three things: the maximum quantity that can reach the market in any month, the alignment between insider release and the roadmap, and the presence or absence of a discretionary override. The third is underestimated: a schedule a multisig can accelerate is not a constraint, and a reader who finds that switch prices the position as unvested.

The corresponding honesty: a schedule proves the release curve of the tokens inside it and nothing else — nothing about balances held elsewhere, the mint function, or the sizing. It is one verified fact, load-bearing only alongside complete disclosure.

How do you set up token vesting on Monad?

Five stages, of which only one is a transaction. Team Finance runs on-chain vesting on Monad at app.team.finance, on the same terms as every other supported chain.

1. Split the cap table by instrument. Assign every insider-held balance either to a single-date lock, where it should simply be immobile, or to a vesting schedule, where it is earned or released progressively.
2. Choose a shape for each recipient class. Apply a cliff, a linear release, or a cliff followed by a linear release to founders, team, advisors and treasury separately, rather than one curve to all four.
3. Fix recipients, amounts, cliff and term. Set the beneficiary address, quantity and release parameters for each schedule, staggering end dates so no single day releases a market-moving quantity.
4. Create the schedule and pay the fee. The allocation moves into the vesting contract, the release parameters are written on-chain, and the fee is charged in MON — after which no party, including Team Finance, can accelerate or override the schedule.
5. Publish the schedule alongside its verification path. Record the source wallet, the vested amount as a percentage of total supply, the cliff and end dates and the contract holding the position, so a counterparty confirms every figure without contacting you.

Two cohorts arrive here differently. Funded protocols hold treasury, investor and advisor allocations long before they hold a pool. nad.fun graduates arrive with the liquidity question already settled by the protocol, which locks the initial pool through its LP tokens at graduation — their open inventory is the founder allocation and whatever the team holds beside it.

How does a buyer verify your vesting schedule without asking you?

Independently, from public data, in about a minute — which is the reason for running the schedule on-chain rather than writing it into a deck. The verifier reads the vested balance, cliff date, release term and beneficiary from the contract, confirms on MonadVision that the tokens left the wallet the team named, and checks the certificate issued at creation.

Design the disclosure so that path is the obvious one. How to verify a lock on Monad sets out what a counterparty checks, in what order, and which discrepancies end a conversation.

What does token vesting cost on Monad?

Token vesting costs $100 on Monad as of September 2026, fixed in USD and charged in MON, with no percentage of the vested allocation taken. Team, liquidity and NFT locks are $150 each on the same terms.

The fee is per schedule rather than per token, so the shape of your cap table sets the spend, not the size of your treasury. As of September 2026 no established locker competitor supports Monad — PinkSale does not list the chain and Streamflow is Solana-only — so for most teams the comparison is against running no schedule at all, which leaves the supply question to whoever asks it. Current pricing is published at <a href="https://www.team.finance" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">team.finance</a>.

FAQ

What is token vesting on Monad, and how is it different from a lock? Token vesting is an on-chain schedule that releases a fixed allocation to a named recipient in increments across a defined term, where a lock immobilises a quantity until one date and then releases all of it at once.

Why does a vesting schedule read as more credible than one long lock? Because a schedule demonstrates a plan and a lock demonstrates a pause, and a sophisticated counterparty is buying the plan.

Can a vesting schedule be cancelled or accelerated? No. Once created, the release parameters cannot be shortened, reversed or overridden by anyone, including Team Finance.

Do nad.fun graduates need vesting? Their liquidity was locked by the protocol at graduation and was never theirs to schedule, but the founder allocation and any team-held balance remain entirely under their control and unscheduled.

What does token vesting cost on Monad? Token vesting costs $100 on Monad as of September 2026, fixed in USD and charged in MON, with no percentage of the vested allocation taken.

How does a buyer verify a vesting schedule without asking the team? Independently, from public data, in about a minute — reading the vested balance, cliff date, release term and beneficiary from the contract, confirming the transfer on MonadVision, and checking the certificate issued at creation.

Next steps: design the release curve · lock a team allocation · verify a lock · lock liquidity · back to the Monad hub