How Can You Stake Your Locked TON in Vesting Contracts?
Main Takeaways
- Over 1 billion Toncoin—nearly 20% of the total supply—is locked in vesting contracts, with gradual unlocks beginning in 2025.
- Unlike many other blockchains, The Open Network allows TON in vesting contracts to be actively used for staking.
- In some cases, users can stake their locked TON with Tonstakers to accumulate staking rewards, maximizing their holdings while waiting for unlocks.
Thanks to Tonstakers, you can stake your locked TON and start earning additional rewards while waiting for unlocks. Put your TON in a vesting contract to work today.
Most blockchains utilize vesting mechanisms—special contracts that temporarily lock tokens and then gradually unlock them over time. It’s often used to gradually unlock large OTC purchases.
In this article, we will cover all the key aspects of vesting: how it benefits the ecosystem, why tokens are locked, and most importantly, how to stake TON locked in a vesting contract.
What does vesting mean?
Vesting is a term from traditional finance that refers to a reward program for employees based on their achievements and tenure. Typically, a company grants employees small amounts of stock quarterly, which they can only sell after a certain period — the process of granting stocks and other benefits is called vesting.
What is vesting in crypto?
In the crypto world, Web3 projects use vesting for tokens instead of stocks. Many teams prefer to lock their tokens for several years and receive them gradually instead of distributing them all at once. This builds community trust since the team is incentivized to develop the project for a longer period.
Vesting in Web3 always operates on smart contracts, which automates and secures token unlocks while making the entire process transparent.
Web3 projects also use vesting to sell large amounts of tokens through OTC, mainly to ensure gradual automated trustless unlocks and avoid possible market pressure. While tokens are locked, the contract that manages them might allow using them in safe activities such as staking.
How is vesting used in OTC deals on TON?
The OTC market on TON has played a significant role in early token distribution, with over 350 million TON locked in vesting contracts tied to private sales. These contracts help ensure long-term alignment by gradually releasing tokens instead of flooding the market. Unlocks began in June 2024 and will continue in phases until December 2027, following a controlled schedule designed to limit volatility, as explained by Pavel Durov.
As of now, around 267 million TON from these contracts remains locked and scheduled to unlock over the coming years. This supply includes allocations from early investors and strategic partners who acquired tokens through OTC deals and are subject to vesting conditions that prevent immediate liquidity.
While a large portion of early TON is already allocated, more OTC deals may occur in the future as institutional interest in the TON ecosystem grows. These would likely follow the same vesting structure, supporting the network’s long-term sustainability by balancing demand with responsible token release.
Can you stake TON purchased on OTC and locked in a vesting contract?
In OTC deals, buyers often receive TON that is locked in vesting contracts. While this Toncoin is intended to stay locked, a standard vesting contract allows the owner to stake locked TON, use it to run a validator node, or participate in voting.
However, a particular OTC vesting contract might not have a permission to stake TON, so the owner should check the contract’s whitelist first. To do this, paste the vesting contract address on the vesting.ton.org website and check if the Tonstakers staking pool address is on the whitelist.
If Tonstakers address is in the whitelist, you can stake TON in a vesting contract by following the instructions below.
How to stake TON locked in a vesting contract
To stake TON in a vesting contract, follow these steps:
- Connect the wallet that owns TON in a vesting contract to vesting.ton.org.
- Click the "Stake with Tonstakers" button below.
- Enter the amount to stake and confirm the transaction.
Within a few minutes TON will be staked and the wallet will receive tsTON tokens, which represent the staked TON and accumulate Tonstakers staking rewards.
Conclusions
Vesting is a usual practice for OTC token purchases. However, locked TON can be staked, if the vesting contract has Tonstakers included in its whitelist.
To check if staking is possible within a specific vesting contract, users should input contract’s address on vesting.ton.org and verify if the Tonstakers staking pool address is whitelisted. If it is present, they can connect their wallet there and stake their locked TON with Tonstakers following the steps above.