$168M Worth of AVAX Tokens to be Unlocked in a Month

Blockchain research firm K33 has removed Avax, the native token of the Avalanche blockchain, from the list of its most promising tokens. The elimination comes from reassessing the token’s expected inflationary pressure and ownership concentration in the wake of upcoming unlocks. The latest unlock for Avax tokens is scheduled in a month and would release $168M worth of tokens at current prices into circulation.

9.5M Avax Tokens Set to Unlock in One Month

Data by token management platform Token Unlocks shows that 9,541,800 Avax tokens, worth more than $168 million at current rates, are set to be unlocked on May 28, exactly one month from now. Considering the token’s circulating supply of 327 million, the almost 10 million Avax scheduled to be unlocked equate to more than 3% of all tokens in circulation.

The unlocking event is also expected to negatively impact the price of Avax, according to K33 researchers. In a recent report, the company also revealed that it had removed Avax from its K33-Vinter index, which consists of an equal-weighted mix of the most promising tokens amongst the top 30 crypto assets.

“The K33 Vinter Quality index selection has one change from the February 1, 2023, selection,” K33 Vice President Anders Helseth said in a Thursday update. “AVAX, the native token of the Avalanche Network, is taken out of the index.”

Helseth detailed that the decision to eliminate Avax from the index came after reassessing the expected inflationary pressure and ownership concentration. “AVAX has a large percentage of tokens outstanding from future supply through rewards and, more importantly, through vesting schedules,” he said.

“The facts have not changed from the February assessment, but we believe we underestimated the expected supply pressure from the combination of significant inflation and token unlocks. Hence, AVAX receives a lower Inflation and Ownership Concentration score and is consequently excluded from the index.”

In total, more than 361.25 million Avax tokens, or more than half of the cryptocurrency’s supply, are still locked, according to data by Token Unlocks. These locked tokens will be released gradually over the next seven years, with the last patch scheduled to be unlocked on October 20, 2030.

For perspective, linearly, more than $1.76 million worth of Avax is unlocked daily.

Avalanche’s Story So Far

Avalanche is a decentralized platform for launching DeFi applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in a highly scalable and interoperable ecosystem. Ava Labs, a New York-based research and development company, launched the Avalanche mainnet in September 2020.

The blockchain was created by Emin Gün Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University and a prominent figure in the blockchain space. Sirer has been developing various blockchain projects, including Bitcoin-NG, the first blockchain protocol to achieve sub-second latency and scalable throughput.

Avalanche’s launch was highly anticipated, and it quickly gained traction. Within weeks of its launch, it had already attracted several high-profile DeFi projects, including Aave, Curve Finance, and Chainlink.

The Avalanche network also boasts impressive features, including low latency, high throughput, and low transaction fees. It can handle up to 4,500 transactions per second and finalizes transactions in less than a second. This makes it one of the fastest blockchain networks currently in existence.

Overall, Avalanche has quickly established itself as a significant player in the DeFi space. It ranks among the top five most popular smart contract platforms, with over $825 million in total value locked (TVL), according to DeFi Llama.

At the time of writing, Avalanche’s native token is trading $17.59, essentially flat over the past day. However, the token is down by more than 87% compared to its all-time high of $144.96 registered in November 2021, according to data by CoinGecko.

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