Solana’s 7.5 Million SOL Lock Expired Amid a Larger Supply Release

A lock covering 7.5 million SOL sold by Solana Labs to Alameda Research Ventures expired on March 1, 2025, making the tokens transferable onchain under Solana’s published schedule. The release was a major test of how the market would absorb assets associated with the collapsed FTX and Alameda businesses.

The official record directly establishes the 7.5 million-SOL transaction. Contemporaneous market research placed the broader March 1 unlock between 10 million and 11.2 million SOL after including additional scheduled releases. Those figures should not be combined without qualification: the official Solana disclosure identifies a specific transaction, while the larger estimates depend on third-party tracking of multiple locked accounts.

What the official schedule established

Solana’s disclosure identified a February 17, 2021 sale of 7.5 million SOL by Solana Labs to Alameda Research Ventures. It stated that the full balance would unlock on March 1, 2025.

Under Solana’s explanation, locked tokens were held in locked stake accounts and could not be transferred onchain before their locks expired. They could still be staked or divided into smaller stake accounts while locked. Expiration therefore removed a transfer restriction; it did not create new SOL, prove that the tokens were sold on March 1 or establish that all of them immediately entered exchange order books.

That distinction mattered because much of the discussion before the event treated the unlock as automatic selling pressure. An unlocked holder could transfer, continue staking, hold or sell the assets. Establishing which outcome occurred would require verified account attribution and transaction-level evidence.

Why reports cited 11.2 million SOL

Amberdata’s February 28 institutional market report estimated that roughly 10 million to 11 million SOL, about 2.3% of circulating supply under its measurement, would unlock on March 1. Protos, citing Messari data, reported 11.2 million SOL and estimated a 2.2% increase in transferable supply.

The percentage difference reflects rounding and potentially different circulating-supply inputs. More importantly, the 11.2 million figure included more than the single 7.5 million-SOL transaction documented in Solana’s table. Coinburn could not independently reconstruct every account included in the larger estimate from a contemporaneous primary ledger supplied by the publishers.

At Coinbase’s March 1 SOL-USD closing trade of $143.59, 7.5 million SOL had a notional value of approximately $1.077 billion. Applying the same venue-specific price to 11.2 million SOL produces approximately $1.608 billion. These are Coinburn calculations for scale, not transaction values, liquidation proceeds or evidence that the entire balance traded at that price.

The event-day market record

Coinbase’s SOL-USD candle covering 00:00 through 24:00 UTC on March 1 opened at $148.09 and closed at $143.59, a 3.04% decline calculated from those two trades. The session ranged from $138.49 to $151.10, with reported volume of approximately 1.083 million SOL on that venue.

Coinbase represents one exchange, not a consolidated global market. Cryptocurrency trades continuously, and another venue or daily boundary can produce different prices and returns. Coinbase also warns that historical candle data may be incomplete when an interval contains no trades, although SOL-USD was actively traded during the cited session.

The simultaneous decline does not prove that the unlock caused selling. The release was publicly scheduled, and digital-asset markets were already emerging from a broad late-February retreat. No reviewed source isolates March 1 order flow attributable to the newly transferable tokens.

Later context

Messari’s subsequent first-quarter review described March 2025 as the largest month in the remaining FTX-related schedule, with 11.2 million SOL unlocking at an estimated value near $1.6 billion. That later report helps reconcile the widely reported aggregate with Solana’s narrower transaction disclosure. It does not establish that all unlocked tokens were sold, identify every beneficial owner at the moment of release or revise the March 1 price record.