Monad Unlocks 16.6 Billion MON in 16 Days - Trackers Are 10 Billion Apart and $0.0188 Decides the Next Leg

Monad's mainnet went live on 24 November 2025 with 100 billion MON in existence and 49.4% of that supply unlocked on day one. Twelve months later, at 05:48 UTC on 24 November 2026, the one-year cliff on the other half expires - and the trackers cannot agree on how big the release is by about ten billion tokens.

DefiLlama counts 17.105 billion MON for the day, worth roughly $280 million at Friday's price and equal to 144.65% of the 11.825 billion tokens in circulation. Tokenomist models the same date at 6.66 billion. That spread is not a rounding difference: it is the difference between a 56% increase in float and a 140% one.

What actually unlocks on 24 November

The Foundation published its schedule as a document, not a dashboard. The tokenomics overview says roughly 10.8 billion MON entered public circulation at launch through the public sale and the airdrop, and another 38.5 billion of ecosystem tokens were unlocked and stewarded by the Monad Foundation - 49.4 billion in total. Team, investors and the Category Labs treasury stayed locked behind a one-year cliff.

Investors hold about 19.7 billion MON and the treasury about 3.95 billion, both on a four-year schedule with a one-year cliff and equal 1/48 monthly releases after it. A cliff on a 48-month schedule releases 12/48 - a quarter - in a single day: roughly 4.93 billion MON for investors and 988 million for the treasury. Those two tranches are the part every tracker agrees on.

The team's 27 billion is the part nobody can size. The overview commits to one number: at the one-year anniversary, released team tokens will represent about 10.7% of initial token supply. Read that literally and 10.7 billion MON becomes transferable on day 366, the single largest component of the event. Spread the same 27 billion evenly over 36 monthly tranches instead and the first release is 750 million.

Where the ten-billion-token gap comes from

The low reading - 6.66 billion MON, about $109 million at spot - comes from modelling the team at 1/36 per month. The high reading - 16.6 to 17.105 billion, $272 million to $280 million - comes from reading the 10.7% line as written. Tokenomics.com puts the event at 16.61 billion MON, 16.6% of total supply and 33.6% of market cap. CoinStats' unlock table carries 17.21 billion MON, or $336 million at early-November prices, and calls it the largest unlock of the month.

The argument over the two numbers is worth reading in full, because it is a disclosure problem rather than a data problem. Team vesting tied to individual start dates is normal, and publishing every employee's schedule would be odd - but an aggregate figure for tokens that become transferable on 24 November would settle it. After the cliff the schedule settles into roughly 1.2 billion MON a month through November 2029.

The insiders already turned down $60 million

In August the Monad Foundation finished offering to buy locked MON from certain early investors at a discount, with up to $60 million set aside for it. Almost everyone approached declined. Investors turning down cash at a discount with the cliff three months away is a statement about what they expect the token to be worth when it is finally theirs to sell.

Public-sale buyers are the ones with a known entry price: up to 7.5 billion MON at $0.025 through Coinbase's token sale platform. At $0.0164 that cohort sits about 34% under water, and it is the only group whose cost basis is public.

The chart is already at a record low

MON closed at $0.01636 on 7 November, an all-time low, 66.5% below the $0.04883 it printed on 26 November 2025, two days after launch. It is 54.4% below the $0.03585 high of 2 October and 16% lower than it was a week ago.

The 30-day downleg runs from $0.02799 on 11 October to $0.01634 on 7 November, which puts the 0.786 retrace at $0.01883. The 4 November bounce topped at $0.01905 - 22 ticks above that line - closed the session at $0.01834, and three sessions later the token was printing record lows. Four consecutive closes have now landed under $0.01700.

$0.01883 is the line that decides the next move. Reclaim it and the 0.618 at $0.02079 and the 28 October high at $0.02215 come back into play before the unlock. Lose $0.01634 and the measured move of the 28 October to 7 November leg - 0.00581 - projected from the 4 November rejection lands at $0.01324.

What would change the picture

Two things, and neither is a candlestick. The first is disclosure: a single aggregate number for team tokens that become transferable on 24 November would collapse a ten-billion-token gap that currently makes the event impossible to price. The second is flow. DefiLlama puts 24-hour volume near $8 million, which turns a $272 million release into roughly a month of trading to absorb, against a float that is worth only $194 million at the same price.

Until either changes, the market is pricing an unlock it cannot size, sixteen days out, at an all-time low. The 24 November session will settle the argument one transfer at a time.