LayerZero Unlock on August 20: How to Calculate ZRO's Monthly Dilution

On Thursday, August 20, 2026, LayerZero releases the next monthly tranche of its ZRO token. Depending on the data platform, that is around 24.7 million to 25.7 million tokens, worth roughly $18.9 million to $19.9 million. It sounds like an event, but it is a repeat: the same process ran on July 20, it runs again on September 20, and it has run on every monthly date since the summer of 2025.

That is what sets it apart from the unlock reports you usually read. A one-off date can be told as news. A monthly release, by contrast, is a permanent property of the token, and it can be calculated. Using ZRO as the example, this article shows you how to do that yourself and why the amount released is almost never the amount that reaches the market.

What comes off the LayerZero lock-up on August 20, 2026

LayerZero is an interoperability layer: software through which applications send value between different blockchains. By its own account, around 70 percent of all cross-chain stablecoin transfers run over it. ZRO is the associated token, and the total supply is fixed at one billion units.

Tokenomist puts the tranche at around 25.7 million ZRO and assigns it to the core contributors, meaning the staff of LayerZero Labs. DropsTab arrives at 24.68 million ZRO, values it at about $18.88 million and shows three separate rounds within the same date. The price stood at around $0.77 on August 16, 2026, which converts to roughly 0.66 euros.

Two figures put the relationship in order: market capitalisation sits at about $271 million to $279 million, and the fully diluted valuation at around $767 million to $769 million. The distance between them is the still-locked share of the total supply. If you have known LayerZero only as a security topic so far, the earlier assessment is in our piece on the warning after the KelpDAO exploit.

Cliff vesting and linear vesting are two different designs

The cliff: one edge, one date

With cliff vesting a lock-up ends in one go: a date sits in the schedule, a large block becomes available at once, and nothing happens before it. Such dates generate headlines because they have a clear moment. How to check the arithmetic we demonstrated on August 15, 2026 with the memecoin YZY: YZY token unlock on August 16.

Linear vesting: a ramp with no visible end

ZRO belongs to the other type. According to the LayerZero Foundation’s tokenomics documentation, strategic partners and core contributors are subject to three-year vesting: a full lock-up for the first year, then monthly releases over the following two years. The token generation event took place in June 2024, and the lock-up ended in June 2025. The schedule is therefore about half worked through and runs into 2027.

The practical difference: with a cliff you ask what happens on one day. With linear vesting you ask how much new supply arises month after month and whether demand keeps pace. That is a question about the structure of the token.

How to calculate a token’s monthly dilution yourself

The calculation needs three inputs, all of them public at serious projects: a group’s allocation in percent, the total supply and the number of release months.

For ZRO it looks like this. The allocation to core contributors is 25.50 percent of the total supply, which is 255 million tokens. Spread over 24 monthly tranches, that gives exactly 10,625,000 ZRO per month. For the strategic partners at 32.20 percent, meaning 322 million tokens, you arrive at around 13.42 million a month. Together that is about 24.04 million tokens, which puts you very close to the tranche the platforms report for August 20.

The value of this exercise lies in its being independently verifiable: all you need is the project’s tokenomics document and a calculator. Anyone working with such data more often will find tools in the comparison of the best crypto analytics platforms; doing the arithmetic on the raw figures yourself still makes sense, because the platforms disagree with each other.

The decisive step comes afterwards: set the monthly amount against the circulating supply. Around 25 million new tokens against roughly 353 million in circulation is a good seven percent. A token whose tradable supply grows by that order of magnitude every month on paper needs continuous additional demand simply to hold its price.

Circulating supply, unlocked supply and total supply are three different numbers

ZRO illustrates a mistake that keeps happening in unlock debates: three supply figures get confused, although they measure different things.

The total supply is undisputed at one billion ZRO. On the circulating supply the figures diverge: CoinGecko and Tokenomist both give 353,313,325 tokens, while DropsTab reports 364.26 million. The LayerZero Foundation, in turn, writes in its tokenomics overview of June 2026 that 514 million ZRO are unlocked and the remaining 486 million continue to vest.

Those 514 million do not contradict the 353 million; they measure something else. Unlocked means a lock-up period has expired. In circulation means the tokens sit freely tradable with holders. The difference lies above all with the foundation: it was originally allocated 383 million tokens, of which 250 million were unlocked at launch, and the remaining 183 million are locked again on its own account.

On top of that, the allocations have not stayed static: in September 2025 the foundation says it bought back 50 million ZRO from strategic partners and therefore now puts their total allocation at 312 million rather than the original 322 million. The core contributors, the foundation adds, do not follow a uniform schedule but individual joining terms, which is why the clean division by 24 remains an approximation for them.

The practical consequence for your calculation: always use the same reference figure. A tranche of 25 million is 2.5 percent of the total supply, around seven percent of the circulating supply and just under five percent of the unlocked supply. All three numbers are correct, and they tell completely different stories.

Released is not sold: what LayerZero reports about actual sales

The most important objection to any dilution calculation runs like this: an unlocked token does not have to be sold. It can sit still or serve as collateral. The release amount is therefore an upper limit on possible selling pressure.

LayerZero puts forward its own figures on this. As at May 31, 2026, 134.7 million ZRO had been unlocked to investors since the token launch; of those, on the foundation’s account, 85.9 million and thus 63.8 percent were still held. Open-market sales averaged 4.9 million ZRO a month, around 0.5 percent of the total supply. Against a nominal monthly release of about 25 million, that is roughly a fifth.

The distribution is revealing: a single actor accounts, according to the foundation, for 37.9 percent of all unlocked ZRO sold so far. Without that actor, all remaining investors together came to an average of 3.0 million ZRO a month, with 73.9 percent of holdings untouched.

These figures come from the issuer itself and should be read accordingly: a company that has to explain a high release rate has an interest in sales figures that look low. You can verify them only in part, through blockchain explorers and the movements of known wallet addresses. The direction is instructive all the same.

The buyback programme works against the release without cancelling it

LayerZero sets a buyback programme against the release: by its own account, $112.7 million has flowed into ZRO buybacks since September 2025. The largest single item was the buyback of 50 million tokens mentioned above, which on the foundation’s account cut the gross monthly release to strategic partners from 15 million to 12.7 million ZRO. Added to that are buybacks from the proceeds of the bridging protocol Stargate, so far 1.9 million tokens for $2.8 million.

Weigh the orders of magnitude against each other and you see the limit of this counterweight. Against the 1.9 million tokens bought back from protocol revenue stands a monthly tranche around thirteen times as large. What worked structurally was above all the one-off buyback, because it removed supply from the release schedule for good. The running purchases depend on how much the protocol earns.

Trading volume decides whether a tranche creates any pressure at all

A release amount on its own says little. Only in relation to trading volume does it become a statement about whether the market can absorb the supply: the same tranche is a footnote for a liquid token and a problem for a thinly traded one. LayerZero uses precisely this reference figure and converts the largest seller’s remaining position of 2.05 million tokens a month into around 0.17 percent of monthly trading volume.

The formula holds for every token: monthly tranche divided by average trading volume over the same period. The catch lies in data quality, because trading volumes are reported by exchanges and can be inflated.

What the dilution calculation cannot do

Honesty requires naming the limits of the method: the calculation tells you how much new supply arises on paper. About the price it says nothing.

A release date has as a rule been known for years and appears in public documents; what is widely known may already be priced in. The calculation also lacks the demand side: a project whose usage grows faster than its release schedule can rise despite heavy dilution. An allocation likewise says nothing about how the recipients will behave. And governance remains an uncertainty of its own: at LayerZero a protocol fee has been voted on three times, each time with more than 96 percent approval, yet most recently in December 2025 on a turnout of only 3.71 percent.

The dilution calculation is a tool for putting things in order, not a buy signal and not a sell signal. Its use is that a headline carrying a big number no longer passes for analysis.

For tax the holding period under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act counts, not the unlock date

For private investors in Germany, selling crypto-assets counts as a private disposal transaction under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. What matters is the period between acquisition and disposal: if it is not more than one year, the gain is taxable, and after that it falls out of taxation. There is also an exemption limit; on the wording of the statute, gains stay tax-free where the total gain from all private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. An exemption limit is not an allowance: once it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable.

If you reshuffle at short notice because you expect supply pressure, that can break a period which would otherwise almost have run out. None of this replaces tax advice in an individual case.

Putting the LayerZero unlock in context: what to take away

1. Work out the monthly amount before you judge an unlock headline. Allocation in percent times total supply, divided by the release months: for ZRO that is 255 million tokens over 24 months and thus 10,625,000 units for the core contributors alone. Set the result against the circulating supply. Which data sources are worth using is set out in the comparison of crypto analytics platforms.
2. Check two sources and accept the divergence as a range. For ZRO the figures for the same date lie between 24.68 million and 25.7 million tokens, and the circulating supply differs by eleven million units depending on the provider. Note as you go what any percentage refers to. Which trading venues are subject to supervision is shown in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Keep the supply question apart from your tax question. Whether a project releases tokens decides nothing about your holding period. Before you reshuffle because of a date, check when you bought and whether the one-year period under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies. Continuous record-keeping takes that off your hands; see the comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

The figures on allocation, buybacks and sales come from the LayerZero Foundation’s tokenomics overview of June 3, 2026; the supply figures for August 20, 2026 can be retrieved at Tokenomist, cross-read against CoinGecko and DropsTab.

(As of August 16, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)