Time Locks

Some Mina tokens initially circulated on the blockchain with locked balances on specific accounts. Over time, these locked tokens gradually unlock.

The Mina protocol employs two mechanisms to unlock Mina tokens: cliff and vesting. Let’s delve into each of these:

Cliff Mechanism

The cliff mechanism allows a portion of the cliff amount - initially locked funds - to be unlocked when the specified cliff time arrives.

Vesting Mechanism

Conversely, vesting involves gradually unlocking the remaining initially locked funds following a predetermined vesting time for a predetermined vesting increment.

You can keep track of accounts that have locked tokens on their balance and unlock events on Mina using our Minascan explorer.

On the account details page, we show a widget illustrating how many tokens have already unlocked and how many tokens remain to unlock, and a list of time lock parameters, among which are the following:

• Movable Balance - the total amount of Mina funds on the account balance that can be moved from the account balance and used for transactions
• Current Unlocked Balance - the amount of unlocked Mina funds on the account. These can be used in payment transactions
• Current Locked Balance - the amount of locked Mina funds on the account balance. These cannot be used in payment transactions
• Initial Locked Balance - the initial amount of locked Mina funds on the account balance at the moment of Genesis
• Cliff Amount - the amount of Mina funds on the account that will be unlocked when the slot corresponding to the Cliff Time is mined
• Cliff Time - the slot where the locked Mina funds of the account will start to unlock
• Vesting Amount - the amount of Mina funds that is unlocked whenever the next Vesting Time interval is over
• Vesting Increment - the amount of Mina funds that is unlocked whenever the next Vesting Time interval is over
• Vesting Time - the interval after which some of the account's funds are unlocked until fully unlocked. These intervals begin to count down when a Cliff Time is reached
• Vesting Period - the period, in slots, which takes a certain incremental amount of tokens to unlock