Tomorrow, LayerZero (ZRO) will see one of the week’s major events.
On October 20, 23.63 million ZRO will be unlocked.
At the current price, that’s approximately:
💰 $44 million
And, more importantly, that amount is around 5.91% of the current circulating supply.
That’s already enough for a single unlock to get the market’s attention.
But does that mean holders will simply dump 23 million ZRO onto the market tomorrow?
Not necessarily.
Who will receive the tokens?
The upcoming unlock is split roughly as follows:
👨💻 Core Contributors — 10.63 million ZRO
🤝 Strategic Partners — 13 million ZRO
Total:
23.63 million ZRO.
And this is where things get interesting.
This isn’t an airdrop for thousands of random users.
The tokens are going to the project’s team members and strategic partners.
So the main question is:
what will they do with them?
Why is the market afraid of unlocks?
The mechanics are very simple.
Imagine that around 400 million ZRO are currently in circulation.
Then another 23.63 million tokens appear, which previously couldn’t be freely sold.
The supply potentially increases.
If some recipients decide to take profits:
📉 additional selling pressure emerges
📉 order books get more supply
📉 buyers need to absorb this volume
That’s exactly why large unlocks often cause jitters even before the tokens are released.
But unlock ≠ automatic dump
This is one of the most common misconceptions in the crypto market.
An unlocked token becomes available for sale.
But that absolutely doesn’t mean:
the unlocked tokens will necessarily be sold.
And LayerZero has some interesting statistics on this.
The project itself previously disclosed data on past strategic investor unlocks.
As of May 31, around 134.7 million investor ZRO tokens had been unlocked.
Of those, around 85.9 million — 63.8% — were still held by investors and had not been sold on the open market.
In other words, most previously unlocked ZRO never immediately entered the market.
And actual sales were far lower than the unlock amount
According to LayerZero itself, investors’ average open-market sales were around:
4.9 million ZRO per month
or approximately 0.5% of the total supply.
Excluding one particularly active seller, the other investors sold just around:
3 million ZRO per month on average.
That’s a very important distinction.
On the chart, the unlock looks scary:
23.63 million new ZRO 😱
But the actual pressure on the market will depend not on the unlock figure itself,
but on how many of these coins actually make it onto exchanges and get sold.
LayerZero also bought back its own tokens
There’s another point many people might miss.
The LayerZero Foundation previously bought 50 million ZRO from early investors.
This reduced the monthly unlock amount for Strategic Partners from around 15 million to 12.7 million ZRO, while the tokens purchased by the Foundation were relocked until the launch of Zero mainnet.
So the team has already taken steps aimed at reducing supply pressure.
And what’s happening with LayerZero itself?
ZRO isn’t a small token that exists purely for speculation.
LayerZero is infrastructure for transferring data and assets between different blockchains.
According to the project itself, LayerZero’s technology operates across around 165 networks, more than $260 billion in value has passed through it, and it handles a significant share of cross-chain stablecoin flows.
Ethereum.
Solana.
BNB Chain.
Arbitrum.
Polygon.
Avalanche.
And many other networks can interact through LayerZero.
That’s why the fundamental story around the project is much bigger than a single unlock.
But you can’t ignore 5.91% of the supply either
This is where I wouldn’t swing to the other extreme, either.
Even if past investors didn’t sell most of their unlocked tokens:
23.63 million ZRO is still a significant amount.
Especially if the market is weak.
If these things happen at the same time:
🩸 Bitcoin falls
🩸 altcoins weaken
🩸 ZRO flows onto exchanges
🩸 unlock recipients take profits
then the pressure could become noticeable.
But if demand remains strong and most recipients continue holding their tokens, the market may absorb the unlock much more calmly than many expect.
What would I watch tomorrow?
Not just the price.
There are three things that are much more interesting:
1️⃣ Large transfers of ZRO to exchanges
That would be a more serious warning sign than the unlock itself.
2️⃣ Trading volume
If the price falls as volume surges, sellers are genuinely active.
3️⃣ Price action after the event itself
Sometimes the market falls ahead of an unlock because everyone is expecting selling.
Then, when the event finally happens, there are no sellers left.
A classic scenario:
sell the rumor → buy the news.
And here’s what makes tomorrow interesting
ZRO is currently trading at around $1.85–1.90.
Around $44 million worth of tokens will be unlocked tomorrow.
And the market will effectively put this to the test:
Is there enough demand to absorb the new supply?
If ZRO gets through the unlock calmly and holds its price, that would be a pretty strong signal.
But if a sharp sell-off begins on heavy volume, it would mean the market underestimated the supply pressure.
👇 What do you think will happen after the unlock?
🚀 ZRO holds up and moves higher
😐 the market barely notices the event
🩸 heavy profit-taking and a drop begin
And the big question:
Would you buy the coin BEFORE a major unlock, or wait to see how the market reacts AFTER it?
#zro #LayerZero #TokenUnlock #altcoins #crypto
$ZRO
