At 12:00 PM UTC on June 26, Sahara AI will release 1,030,000,000 SAHARA tokens, a single tranche equal to roughly 30% of current circulating supply. The breakdown: 534.9 million to early backers, 406.25 million to the core team and contributors, 53 million to ecosystem development, and 31.25 million to community incentives. Backers, team, and ecosystem together account for 994 million tokens, roughly 96.5% of the unlock. Community holders receive 3%.
Sahara AI is a full-stack, AI-native layer-1 blockchain with three product lines: a Data Services Platform for data labeling and refinement, an AI Developer Platform for model creation and tooling, and a decentralized AI Marketplace for datasets, models, agents, and compute. SAHARA serves as the network's token for transaction fees, AI asset licensing, governance, and royalty distribution.
The unlock arrives after SAHARA fell more than 50% earlier in June, per Yahoo Finance. Sahara AI attributed the move to a "futures-led liquidation cascade" and stated that no team tokens were sold.
As of June 25, SAHARA trades at $0.01343, approximately 92% below its all-time high of $0.1605 set in July 2025 and partially recovered from the June drawdown, with a circulating market cap of roughly $45.7 million on 3.41 billion tokens in circulation. At that price, Thursday's unlock represents roughly $13.8 million in newly transferable value.
This is not a community distribution. Of the 1.03 billion tokens, backers and team alone collect 941 million; ecosystem development and community incentives split the remaining 84 million. Sahara AI's tokenomics documentation places 19.75% of the 10 billion total supply with early backers and 15% with the core team, both on a four-year vesting schedule with a one-year cliff. Thursday's release falls at roughly the one-year mark for both cohorts.
