Token Unlock

The Radix Token Unlock was a transition from the price-vesting of $XRD to freely transferrable tokens, enacted on September 15th, 2021.

Background

A large part of the $XRD supply had been sold to early supporters over the years before the eXRD token launched, on condition that it stay locked and be released only as (e)XRD reached set price thresholds. The locked tokens belonged to those backers and to Radix itself. On 20 August 2021, three weeks after the Olympia mainnet launch, Radix announced a community survey on whether to drop that schedule and unlock everything at once, after some community members had asked for it. The post was explicit that the survey was not a governance vote but a reading of opinion.

Community Surveys

The first survey ran from 23 to 29 August 2021 and asked a single yes/no question: unlock all locked $XRD now, or keep the price-based schedule. A verified Instapass account was required, which limited each person to one entry. 66.8% of participants favoured the immediate unlock.

The second survey ran from 1 to 5 September 2021 and weighted each response by the XRD held or staked in wallets linked to the participant's Instapass account. 72.34% of the weighted response was in favour. Participants held 740.6 million XRD, about 61.7% of the roughly 1.2 billion XRD eligible to take part.

Reasons for Unlocking

The team gave its own reason once the first survey had closed. Price-based unlocking had been meant to align token holders, the team and the community ahead of Olympia, and it worked at first, but through the second and third quarters of 2021 liquidity, holder growth and network value had slowed, and the team concluded the mechanism was holding back adoption and distribution. It had kept the schedule in place until after Olympia so as not to add volatility to the launch.

By 10 September, six weeks after the Olympia mainnet went live on 28 July 2021, over 915 million XRD was staked, 48.3% of the circulating supply at the time, across more than 130 registered validators. The same post cited the interest around the Olympia launch, the coming Alexandria release and the survey majority, and called the unlock one of the most effective ways "to accelerate the distribution of stake, decentralization, and network adoption."

The Unlock

The final unlock of all remaining locked (e)XRD ran on 15 September 2021 between 14:00 and 17:00 UTC. Price-locked XRD arrived in holders' wallets; price-locked eXRD had to be withdrawn through the unlocking contract.

The supply figures Radix published for after the unlock were:

• 9.6 billion $XRD circulating, the difference from total supply being the indefinitely locked Stable Coin Reserve.
• 12 billion $XRD total supply, with no further unlocks.
• 24 billion $XRD maximum supply, reached over at least 40 years through a network emission of 300 million $XRD a year paid to stakers.
• Approximately 15,000 $XRD in transaction fees burnt since the network went live.

Impact

The Radix Report of 16 September 2021 put daily eXRD and XRD trading volume since the unlock at over $65 million.

The same report gave the staked amount as over 1.5 billion XRD, up from 915 million six days earlier. The staked share of supply fell all the same: circulating supply had grown about fivefold, from roughly 1.9 billion to 9.6 billion XRD, so 1.5 billion was about 16% of it, against 48% before the unlock.

The report also said Radix's social media followers were up over 10% in the preceding 14 days, a window that falls mostly before the unlock.

Legacy

The September 2021 unlock left all $XRD freely transferable well ahead of the network's later milestones, including the Babylon smart-contract mainnet in 2023. The protocol network emission referenced at the unlock still carries circulating supply toward the 24 billion $XRD maximum, while the separate Foundation-run validator subsidy that supplemented early staking rewards was later wound down (see Validator Subsidy Sunset). For current tokenomics, see the $XRD Token page.