Aster shifts the team allocation unlock by one year
The cliff for the team allocation—400 million $ASTER, 5% of the maximum supply—is postponed from September 17, 2026, to September 17, 2027. These tokens have not been unlocked since the TGE and will remain locked for another year.
The reason for this change is evident from the numbers. Under the old schedule, linear vesting would have started on September 17, with roughly 10 million ASTER per month over 40 months. By comparison, from July 27 to August 10, the protocol bought back about 2.85 million ASTER—roughly 5.7 million per month. In other words, the buyback would have covered approximately half of the new supply. Now, this excess has been removed for a year.
The Buyback-and-burn mechanism remains unchanged: for every ASTER bought back, an equivalent amount is burned from the reserve, starting with the team allocation. The mechanism continues to operate until the total supply is reduced to 3 billion.
This is already the second tightening of the emission schedule this year: in March, the monthly ecosystem unlock of 78.4 million was replaced with payouts exclusively through staking—approximately 1.8–2.25 million per month.
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