Backloaded vs Frontloaded Linear Vests: The 4-Year Schedule That's Actually 2

Two designs both unlock 100% over 48 months. One puts most of its supply on the market in years 1-2. The other in years 3-4. The decks read identically; the supply curves don’t.

The math: same total, different curves

Three common 48-month profiles for a single 25% allocation:

At month 24, profile A has already unlocked half the supply. Profile B has unlocked a third. Profile C has unlocked nothing. The same 25% supply is distributed but the effective lock differs by years.

The "4-year vest that’s actually 2"

Profile A — pure linear 48-month — is widely described as a “4-year vest”. The math says it’s effectively a 2-year vest, because:

• By month 24, exactly half has unlocked. The other half drips for 24 more months at the same rate.
• 50% of an allocation, fully liquid by month 24, is more than enough to cover most insiders’ sell pressure.
• The market correctly prices the “effective overhang” — once 50%+ is liquid, the remaining 50% drip is rarely the marginal price-mover.

For protecting price discovery in years 1-2 (when the protocol is still proving itself), you want backloaded — most of the allocation locked beyond the first 24 months. Profile B’s 12+36 schedule has only 33% unlocked by month 24; profile C’s 24+24 has 0%.

A “4-year vest” with no cliff is effectively a 2-year vest. Half the allocation is liquid by month 24 — close to the price-discovery window where founders need lock pressure most.

Backloading at the project level

Look at this across the protocol’s aggregate insider supply. Combining team + investors:

Team        : 18%, vested 12mo cliff + 36mo linear  → 100% unlocked at mo 48
Investors   : 22%, vested 12mo cliff + 36mo linear  → 100% unlocked at mo 48

Cumulative insider supply unlocked:
  mo 6:   0% of 40% =  0% of supply
  mo 12:  0% of 40% =  0% of supply
  mo 18: 17% of 40% =  6.7% of supply
  mo 24: 33% of 40% = 13.3% of supply
  mo 36: 67% of 40% = 26.7% of supply
  mo 48: 100% of 40% = 40% of supply

Compare against the same 40% but with frontloaded (no cliff, pure linear over 48mo):

mo 6:  12.5% of 40% =  5.0% of supply
mo 12: 25.0% of 40% = 10.0% of supply
mo 24: 50.0% of 40% = 20.0% of supply
mo 36: 75.0% of 40% = 30.0% of supply
mo 48: 100% of 40% = 40% of supply

At month 24 — the typical “halfway point of price discovery” — backloaded has 13.3% of supply unlocked from insiders. Frontloaded has 20%. The 6.7-percentage-point difference is enormous when your token is mid-cycle.

When to choose each

Backloaded (cliff-heavy):

• Pre-product launch — protocol hasn’t shipped yet. Cliff buys time to build trust without insider unlocks contradicting the narrative.
• Heavy VC cap table — investors expect the cliff, regulators view it favourably, market understands the schedule.
• Long-life infrastructure (L1/L2, oracles) — protocol value compounds over decades. Backloading aligns insiders with the long arc.

Frontloaded (linear, no cliff):

• Founders with track record — Hayden Adams & team had 2 years of public shipping before UNI. Cliff would have been redundant. Frontloaded made the token accessible to small holders sooner. Uniswap chose this.
• Fair-launch + meme — no insider concentration anyway. Linear with no cliff is the simplest, hardest-to-game schedule.
• Solana DeFi — fast cycles. Backloaded too far means the schedule outlives the protocol. Jito uses 12+24 (3yr total) — moderate backloading appropriate for the cycle length.

Hybrid: cliff + quarterly

A pattern gaining traction in 2024-25 launches:

Schedule: 12-month cliff, then 12.5% unlocks every 3 months for 24 months.

Unlock fraction at each milestone:
  mo 12:  0%
  mo 13: 12.5%   <- cliff date, single chunk
  mo 16: 25%
  mo 19: 37.5%
  mo 22: 50%
  mo 25: 62.5%
  mo 28: 75%
  mo 31: 87.5%
  mo 34: 100%

Total unlock window: 36 months (12 + 24). Clean, fewer cliffs to anxiety-watch than monthly-linear, but more granular than annual-cliff. Some founders prefer this for predictability.

What to put in the deck vs the contract

The honest framing for a public tokenomics deck is to show the cumulative supply curve, not just the schedule. “48-month vest with 12-month cliff” tells you nothing about the curve shape. A line graph showing cumulative supply at each month is far more legible — and it’s what buyers actually need.

Schedule descriptions are about policy. Cumulative-supply graphs are about experience. Buyers price experience.