Sahara AI founders, core team members, and advisors voluntarily froze their token allocations for six months on June 24, two weeks after SAHARA fell roughly 55% on June 9 on insider-dump allegations. Two days later, 1.03 billion community tokens unlocked anyway.

The sequence tested Sahara AI's voluntary lockup extension against its scheduled supply release. The team's own allocations were delayed, but the community and ecosystem tranche still entered circulation.

Crash and denial

The June 9 crash came with public accusations that insiders had sold approximately 600 million SAHARA tokens. The team denied the claim. "No team or investor tokens have been sold or moved," it stated, saying the 600 million tokens had been moved into a Chainlink CCIP bridge contract for cross-chain liquidity between Ethereum and BNB Chain. A further 150 million tokens were slated for bridge funding.

Lockup extension

On June 24, the project announced a voluntary revision to its lockup schedule. Founders, core team members, and advisors extended their personal unlocks by six months; investors extended theirs by three months.

The team also rejected community proposals for token burns and reactive buybacks, committing instead to revenue-funded buybacks as part of a longer-term plan.

Community unlock

The freeze did not apply to the project's community and ecosystem tranche. On June 26 at 12:00 PM UTC, 1.03 billion SAHARA tokens, about 30.10% of released supply, entered circulation as originally scheduled.

Post-unlock price

The unlock drew no sharp price reaction. As of June 27, SAHARA trades at $0.01151, down 0.6% in 24 hours and 11.5% over the past seven days, on a market cap of $40.2 million.

The token sits 92.8% below its all-time high of $0.1605, reached on July 24, 2025, and 2.8% above its all-time low of $0.01120 set on June 23, one day before the lockup announcement. Circulating supply stands at 3.49 billion of a 10 billion maximum.

Polychain Capital led Sahara AI's seed round. Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, and Sequoia Capital are among the other backers.