Cliff

A cliff is a waiting period at the start of a vesting schedule during which no tokens are released; when it ends, a first block of tokens typically unlocks and regular releases begin. Arbitrum's team and investor tokens carry four-year lockups with the first unlocks one year after the token generation event of 16 March 2023, then monthly unlocks for the remaining three years: in effect, a one-year cliff. SEED's tokenomics give its team and advisors a 12 month cliff followed by monthly vesting over 24 months, and its investors a 3 month cliff. Uniswap used the word for its governance treasury, which reached its vesting cliff after 30 days.

When a cliff ends, a large block of tokens can become transferable on a single date, which is why tokenomics pages publish those dates. Read them from the project's own documents, and see vesting and token unlock for what follows the cliff.