A lock-up on paper: what the Axis Robotics sell-off teaches founders

What the project says happened

Axis Robotics (AXIS, on Base) started trading on 22 October 2026. On 29 October it published a statement on the sell-off of 28 and 29 October. In its own words, in short:

• No team or investor tokens were sold. 835,000,000 AXIS, 83.5% of supply, sit in a vesting contract the project says is jointly administered with Binance, with the address published so anyone can check the balance.
• The sold tokens came from the launch float, part of the Ecosystem allocation. Because many ecosystem recipients are not crypto-native, their allocation was delivered through a single OTC counterparty, under a written agreement that included lock-up terms.
• The pattern points to that counterparty, the project says: sales through exchange deposit routes and hundreds of fresh addresses within hours of delivery. If so, it calls this inconsistent with the agreement.
• What it is doing: dealings with the counterparty suspended, the agreement under review with legal counsel, and from now on any remaining Ecosystem tokens distributed only through on-chain vesting.

The counterparty is not named, and we have not seen its side. Everything above is the project's account, not a finding.

Where these tokens sit in the supply

Axis publishes its full schedule in its docs. Of the fixed 1 billion supply, 165,000,000 AXIS (16.5%) circulated at launch:

The Ecosystem line is the biggest piece of the launch float, almost half of it. The statement does not say how much of it went through the OTC counterparty, so we do not know what share of the float was involved.

One detail is worth reconciling. The statement says that nothing in the vesting contract unlocks before the 12-month cliff, while the docs schedule the Ecosystem allocation to vest monthly from the first month, with an extra 8,250,000 AXIS in each of the first two months. The cliff in the docs applies to the team and the two private rounds. Holders reading both should take the docs table as the schedule.

Three kinds of lock-up

Founders use one word for three different things:

• On-chain vesting. Tokens sit in a contract that releases them on a schedule. Nobody can sell early, the balance is public, and breaking the lock means breaking the code. This is what Axis says it uses for the team and investors, and what it will now use for the rest of the Ecosystem allocation.
• Custody. A third party holds the tokens and releases them on instruction. Safer than a promise, but you are trusting the custodian's process, and the holdings are usually not visible to the market.
• Contract only. The tokens are delivered to the counterparty's own wallet and the lock-up is a clause in an agreement. Nothing stops a sale. What you get is the right to pursue a remedy afterwards, in whatever court the agreement names, against a party that may be hard to reach. The price impact happens on day one; the remedy, if any, comes months later.

The same gap exists in market-making deals. A market maker usually receives a loan of the project's own tokens, delivered to its wallets, and the term, the return and any option are contract terms, not code. That is normal and often necessary for the job, but it is the reason the terms matter so much. Public examples are on our market makers pages.

What projects disclose today

In our TGE catalog of 58 recent and upcoming launches, checked against official sources only, 27 publish an unlock schedule for team and investors and 21 state the total supply circulating at launch. We do not yet track who receives the launch float or how each part of it is locked. Almost nobody publishes that, and the Axis case shows why it matters: the float is where an unlocked, contract-only position can sit.

Seven questions before you hand tokens to anyone

Whether it is an OTC desk, a market maker, a launch partner or a distributor for recipients who cannot hold tokens themselves:

1. Can the lock-up be enforced by a vesting contract instead of a clause? If the recipient needs flexibility, can only the flexible part be released early?
2. If tokens must be delivered, to which addresses, and will those addresses be disclosed to you, or publicly?
3. What does a breach cost the counterparty in practice: posted collateral, a clawback, liquidated damages you can actually collect?
4. Which law governs the agreement and where would you have to bring a claim?
5. Will the counterparty report balances on a schedule, and can you verify them on-chain?
6. Who on the counterparty's side signs, and is it the entity that will actually hold the tokens?
7. Are these tokens counted in the circulating supply you announce at launch? If they are locked only on paper, they are part of the float.

For teams in the catalog

If you publish how your launch float is distributed and locked, send the link to hello@tgeindex.com and we add it to your profile within one business day. Corrections go into the public changelog. It costs nothing, and nobody can pay for a score.