Waltonchain (WTC) has announced that it will be unlocking its team tokens. Around eight percent of the team’s 10,00,000 WTC tokens will be released today with the remaining to be released “irregularly,” as per the demand.

Initially, the Waltonchain team was supposed to unlock its tokens on July 18 2019, but it extended it for another six months. The replies to the announcement have been largely negative.

In an official blog post, the team explained that the released tokens will go towards the “introduction of more talents to the team” and the ” improvement of the parent-child-chain architecture and technical research and development on applied blockchain projects.” The remaining team tokens will be released “irregularly” with a specific plan for their usage announced each month. As of now, no further details have been provided and it’s unclear whether or not Waltonchain is financially insolvent at the moment.

Many interpreted the announcement, however, as a clear sign that the team will soon be mass dumping its WTC stash on the market.

Waltonchain was also supposed to allocate around 5.2M WTC from the team’s wallet to airdrops and/or token burn if “conditions were met.” However, as of yesterday, the trigger conditions were not reached and the team said this will not go forward as planned.

Despite the entire market being down significantly on the daily, Waltconchain is up 12 percent against USD and 15 percent against BTC.

The Waltonchain token swap for its upcoming mainnet was announced today which preceded the price move.

The token swap is curious given the team’s unlock was announced just yesterday, but it remains to be seen whether the current rally will last. The circumstances are advantageous for the team since they may soon be selling their tokens on the market.

Waltonchain has been among the worst-performing altcoins since the bear market of 2018, with its losses continuing throughout 2019. At its all-time high, all tokens in circulations were worth close to $1 billion but the project now boasts a measly total market capitalization of just $22M. Last year, it was trading for around $1.11 whereas it is now trading for $0.50.