Plasma unlocked 1.81 billion XPL tokens on September 25. That's $160 million at the unlock price, or roughly 63% of the circulating supply before the event. Unlocks that size typically send prices down. XPL is up 20.6% over the past seven days.
The unlock split between team wallets and early investors. Each group received 833 million tokens from a cliff release, plus monthly installments of 69 million tokens. An additional 89 million went to foundation and project allocations the same day. The monthly releases continue through September 2028.
Derivatives activity surged before the unlock
Traders positioned ahead of the event instead of waiting for it to pass. Derivatives volume jumped 183% to $744 million in the 24 hours around the unlock. Open interest climbed 52% to $303 million.
Longs dominated shorts. Binance data showed a long-to-short ratio of 1.60, with 61% of positions betting the price would rise. The team moved an additional 300 million XPL to an unknown wallet during the same window, adding supply pressure. The price kept climbing.
Trading patterns after the release
Twenty-four hours after the Plasma unlock, XPL traded around $0.11, down 4% from its immediate post-unlock peak but still well above where it started the week. Trading volume hit $257 million in the same period. Market capitalization sat at $499 million.
The circulating supply jumped from 2.78 billion to 4.67 billion tokens overnight. Market cap roughly doubled from the pre-unlock baseline to $499 million.
Why the price didn't crater
The Plasma unlock was public knowledge for months. The project's tokenomics documentation laid out the September 25 cliff release in advance. Most traders who intended to sell had weeks to exit before newly unlocked tokens hit exchanges.
The team and investor tranches carried vesting schedules beyond the initial cliff. That spread the actual selling pressure across two years rather than concentrating it in one day. The monthly installments total 228 million XPL each, smaller than the initial cliff but large enough to keep supply flowing.
XPL peaked at $1.68 in September 2025, then fell 95% before this unlock. The price had already absorbed a year of decline. Plasma's network valuation sat at roughly $1.1 billion on a fully diluted basis. Traders betting on a bounce appeared to outnumber those expecting further drops, at least in the derivatives market. The next batch of unlocked tokens arrives on October 25, following the same monthly schedule through 2028.