Locks, vesting and burning
Three different promises, often confused. One returns everything on a date, one releases gradually, and one gives the tokens up for good.
| Lock | Vesting | Burn | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tokens come back | All at once, on one date | Gradually, over a period | Never |
| Typical use | Liquidity, treasury | Team, advisors, investors | Reducing circulating supply |
| Says to a buyer | Not sold before this date | Cannot be dumped in one go | Gone, permanently |
| Cost on Lockbox | One flat fee | One flat fee per recipient | Free |
When to use a lock
Use a lock when the question is whether something will be sold before a date. Liquidity is the common case: a buyer wants to know the pool will still be there next month. A lock answers that and nothing else, which is why the date matters more than the fact of locking.
On Lockbox a straight lock is vesting with no release period, so everything becomes claimable the moment the date passes.
When to use vesting
Use vesting when someone should receive tokens over time rather than in one payment. A cliff is the waiting period before anything at all can be claimed, and the vesting period is how long the rest takes to release after that. A year cliff followed by three years of release is a common shape for contributors.
Vesting is a stronger signal than a lock of the same length, because a lock ends in a single cliff edge where everything becomes sellable at once. Vesting spreads that out.
If you need to set up many schedules at once, the batch page takes a CSV and creates up to 25 per transaction.
When to burn
Burning is for supply you have decided never to use. It is not reversible and not a signalling exercise you can walk back, so it is worth being certain first. A common pattern is burning unsold presale tokens rather than keeping them in a treasury.
One detail that trips people up: sending tokens to a dead address makes them unreachable but does not reduce the token's reported total supply. The tokens still exist and still count. Only a token with its own burn function can lower the reported figure. Both are permanent, but they read differently on a chart. How to burn, and how to prove it.
A fourth option
Lockbox also has transferable vaults, where the vesting schedule is an NFT that can be sold on. The buyer receives the remaining stream. That is worth knowing about if you want a position to stay tradeable while it vests.