Tezos (XTZ)
Unlock Schedule
Tezos (XTZ) Token Unlock & Vesting Schedule
The unlock chart above provides a clear visual overview of the Tezos (XTZ) token release schedule, showing when and how tokens enter circulation across investor, team, treasury, and community allocations. Understanding these tokenomics dynamics is critical for evaluating potential supply pressure, inflation impact, and market liquidity over time — key factors that can influence XTZ price performance.
Each color segment in the chart corresponds to a specific allocation group described in the Allocations section below. Underlying assumptions and data models used to reconstruct this schedule are explained in detail under Assumptions, while broader utility insights and token use cases are covered in Tokenomics & Utility.
Tokenomics & Utility
Tezos tokenomics at a glance
The XTZ token secures the network, pays fees, and powers governance. With the Paris upgrade, Tezos introduced Adaptive Issuance: instead of a fixed inflation rate, issuance varies within a band that expands over time based on the share of XTZ that is staked. This aligns token issuance with network security needs. Quebec refined this mechanism further (“Adaptive Maximum”) to minimize issuance near the target staking ratio. (research-development.nomadic-labs.com)
Staking vs delegation
Tezos historically popularized “delegation,” where holders could delegate staking rights to bakers while keeping their XTZ liquid. Since Paris, Tezos also supports explicit “staking,” where users lock XTZ alongside a baker’s stake. Under Quebec’s economics, stakers earn roughly 3x the rewards of delegators, and delegated funds now carry lower weight (one‑third) in baking rights and voting power. Rio then shortened cycles to 1 day, making staking flows faster. (research-development.nomadic-labs.com)
Rewards that boost Layer 2
To grow rollup throughput, Rio allocates 10% of participation rewards to DAL activity. This links validator incentives directly to Layer 2 scalability and helps apps on Etherlink and other rollups benefit from lower costs and higher capacity. (tezos.com)
What drives XTZ utility and XTZ price narratives
Demand to use apps (fees), staking participation (issuance and yields), and the cadence of protocol upgrades all shape utility. Ecosystem traction—Tezos DeFi, NFTs, gaming on Layer 1 and Etherlink—also influences how markets talk about XTZ price over time, even as real‑time figures change constantly. (tezos.com)
Assumptions
- Supply is uncapped; total_supply set to null.
Tezos has ongoing issuance via Proof-of-Stake rewards, Liquidity Baking subsidy, and possible governance invoices.
- PoS rewards pre-Paris modeled at 80 tez per minute.
Tezos documentation describes a per-minute reward budget of 80 tez prior to Adaptive Issuance; block-time reductions did not change the per-minute budget.
- Start date for PoS rewards set to 2018-07-20.
Tezos betanet launched 2018-06-30 with no block rewards for the first seven cycles (~19–20 days); rewards assumed to begin around July 20, 2018.
- Paris→Quebec and Quebec→present PoS issuance approximated using the historical ~80 tez/min budget for totals.
Paris introduced Adaptive Issuance (dynamic issuance based on staked ratio). For exact monthly amounts, indexers or the RPC endpoint /issuance/expected_issuance must be used; this dataset uses a conservative continuity assumption for aggregate totals only.
- Liquidity Baking subsidy modeled at 5 tez per minute from 2021-08-06 through 2025-10-12.
Granada introduced LB; Paris explicitly sets the subsidy as 5 tez per minute, independent of block time.
- Protocol invoice dates for Athens and Kathmandu are set to the activation month (day approximated as the 1st).
Amendment history provides month/year; invoices are one-off mints at activation. Exact day not critical for monthly modeling.
- 1. https://tezos.foundation/fundraiser-statistics/
- 2. https://tezos.foundation/tezos-betanet-launch/
- 3. https://octez.tezos.com/docs/protocols/010_granada.html
- 4. https://octez.tezos.com/docs/alpha/liquidity_baking.html
- 5. https://octez.tezos.com/docs/protocols/016_mumbai.html
- 6. https://octez.tezos.com/docs/protocols/019_paris.html
- 7. https://octez.tezos.com/docs/active/adaptive_issuance.html
- 8. https://docs.tezos.com/architecture/governance/amendment-history
- 9. https://octez.tezos.com/docs/protocols/014_kathmandu.html
- 10. https://medium.com/tezos/tezos-athens-379f6a0d5332
Allocations
Description
#143
Tezos is a smart contract platform that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism and an on-chain governance model to enable network upgrades without hard forks. It also supports formal verification of smart contracts to ensure their security and correctness.
| Sector: | Layer 1 |
| Blockchain: | Other L1 |