February 22nd, 2021 - The vesting schedule agreed by members of the Early Backers program, EIP-11252019AF, contained a vesting acceleration mechanism, which, under certain market conditions, would accelerate the vesting of these tokens and bring forward the end date of the early backer program. This acceleration mechanism does not increase the fixed, total amount of tokens in the early backer program - it increases the daily vesting amount of those tokens. The Early Backer vesting program, without acceleration, would be completed in 2024.
This acceleration mechanism is based on the 30 day rolling average value of the Algo token. When the 30 day average, on any day, exceeds the previous “high water mark” 30 day average, accelerated vesting will begin. As the new 30 day average increases so does the 30 day “new high water mark”. This daily acceleration will increase until the day when the 30 day average is below the increased 30 day “high water mark”. At this point acceleration will stop and will not restart until the 30 day average once again passes the new highest water mark.
Since February 3rd, the 30 day rolling average exceeded the previous high water mark and accelerated vesting began. Accelerated vesting has continued to date, and as of the 22nd Of February, ~615M Algo have been accelerated into circulating supply. As the current value of the Algo is now below the $1.8 level achieved in January, the 30 day rolling average may soon fall below the highest water mark and acceleration would stop - when this may happen will depend on the market and cannot be forecast to a specific day.
As a result of the accelerated vesting that occurred in 2020 and the accelerated vesting that has occurred to date in 2021, the early backer program will now complete, at the latest, by 2023. This has reduced the program duration by at least a year. If further acceleration periods occur between now and 2023, this completion date will further come forward in time.
To be clear, this vesting occurs daily and not as 1 large injection of supply. 3rd party research websites may not be updating their supply numbers on a daily or weekly basis, and as such, there may be a lag on this information being updated. The Algorand Foundation is working with these research sites to improve real-time reporting of supply. For real-time information on the token diffusion, on-chain transactions, etc. on the Algorand blockchain, please refer to the following block explorer websites: https://algoexplorer.io and https://goalseeker.io.
Further details on accelerated vesting and on token diffusion in general will be shared by the Foundation in its bi-annual transparency report.
