Sablier vs Hedgey vs UNCX: Token Vesting Protocol Comparison (2026)

If your project is about to launch a token, or you've just been granted one with a vesting schedule, you'll quickly run into three names: Sablier, Hedgey, and UNCX. Together they account for the majority of on-chain vesting positions across Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Polygon. They all do roughly the same thing – lock tokens in a contract, release them on a schedule – but the mechanics differ in ways that matter when you're choosing one (or trying to claim from one).

This guide compares all three on the dimensions that actually drive a decision: vesting model, cliff support, claim UX, gas cost, multi-chain coverage, NFT representation, and ecosystem fit. We're protocol-neutral – Vestream tracks vestings across all three (and six others) so we have no horse in the race. The recommendations below are what we'd tell a friend asking which one to use.

TL;DR – Quick verdict

Sablier

Sablier is the oldest and most widely-used streaming token vesting protocol in DeFi. Originally launched in 2020, the V2 contracts (LockupLinear and LockupTranched) are now the canonical reference for what 'crypto-native vesting' looks like. If you've heard of any vesting protocol, it's probably this one.

How Sablier works

Sablier's flagship feature is per-second streaming. Instead of releasing tokens in chunks (e.g. monthly), the contract continuously increases the recipient's claimable balance, second by second. From the recipient's perspective, the math looks like: at any moment, claimable = (totalAmount × elapsedSeconds) / vestingDurationSeconds. The contract uses pure on-chain time arithmetic – no off-chain oracle, no scheduled tasks, no manual triggers.

Sablier supports two main shapes: LockupLinear (single linear stream, optionally with a cliff) and LockupTranched (multiple tranches with custom amounts and unlock times – good for milestone-based grants). A single Sablier contract on each chain serves all streams, which means recipients claim through the same dashboard regardless of which project granted them the tokens.

Sablier strengths

• Battle-tested – over $500M in cumulative vested value across all chains. Used by major DAOs (MakerDAO, Aave, Lido, etc.) for treasury vesting.
• Per-second streaming – recipients can claim any time without waiting for a calendar tick. Useful for cash-flow-sensitive recipients (advisors, contractors).
• Cancelable streams – projects can configure vests as cancelable (returning unvested tokens to the grantor) or non-cancelable. Both are common.
• Polished recipient UX – Sablier's own claim dashboard is the cleanest in the category, with clear schedules, claim history, and ENS integration.
• The Graph subgraphs – every chain has a public subgraph that aggregators (like Vestream) can read efficiently.

Sablier weaknesses

• No NFT receipts in V2 (V1 had them, V2 dropped them) – vested positions are bound to the recipient address. If you lose access to that wallet, the tokens are stranded.
• No native LP locker – Sablier is purely vesting. If you also need to lock your token's liquidity pool, you'll be combining Sablier with another tool (often UNCX).
• Tranched math can confuse – for non-developers, the LockupTranched model is harder to reason about than a simple monthly schedule.

Hedgey

Hedgey's distinctive design choice is that every vesting plan is an NFT. When a project grants you tokens through Hedgey, you don't just get a stream – you get an ERC-721 token in your wallet that represents the right to claim. This sounds like a small detail but it changes the economics meaningfully.

How Hedgey works

Hedgey calls a vesting plan a TokenVestingPlan, and each one is minted as an NFT to the recipient. The NFT carries the schedule (start time, cliff, end time, total amount) and the right to claim accumulated tokens at any time. Crucially, NFTs are transferable – you can sell, gift, or move your unvested allocation to another wallet without breaking the schedule. This is impossible on Sablier where vests are bound to the original recipient.

Hedgey's plans support both linear and milestone (stepped) schedules, with optional cliffs. Like Sablier, claims are pull-based – the recipient calls redeemPlans() on the contract to claim the currently-vested portion.

Hedgey strengths

• Transferable plans – NFT representation means vesting positions can be transferred (e.g. to a multi-sig, to a new wallet for security, or sold OTC). Unique in this category.
• Inheritance-friendly – because the NFT is portable, estate planning is significantly easier than with bound-to-address vests.
• Strong investor allocation use case – VCs prefer Hedgey because they can transfer SAFT positions between fund vehicles without re-negotiating with the project.
• Comprehensive schedule shapes – supports linear with cliff, stepped, milestone-based, and combinations.
• Clean web app for project deployment – Hedgey's create-a-plan flow is the most polished if you're a project setting up vesting for the first time.

Hedgey weaknesses

• Higher gas at claim time – NFT contract overhead means each claim costs noticeably more than a Sablier claim. Adds up if you have many small vests.
• Smaller TVL than Sablier – meaningful but not dominant. Around $140M cumulative as of early 2026.
• NFT discoverability tradeoff – recipients sometimes don't realise they have a Hedgey NFT in their wallet. We've seen multiple cases of users missing claims because they didn't check NFT holdings.

UNCX

UNCX (formerly Unicrypt) is positioned slightly differently from Sablier and Hedgey. It started as a liquidity locker for token projects – a way to lock your Uniswap LP tokens so investors trust that the founder won't rug-pull liquidity – and grew vesting features alongside that. As a result, UNCX is the natural choice for projects that need both LP locks AND team/investor vesting in one place.

How UNCX works

UNCX has two distinct vesting products: TokenVesting (V3, the modern locker) and VestingManager (the legacy variant used in earlier launches). Both lock ERC-20 tokens with a schedule but the contract architecture differs. From a recipient's perspective they look similar – you go to the UNCX dashboard, connect your wallet, and claim.

UNCX's vesting model is cliff-plus-stepped: a cliff period during which nothing unlocks, then either linear release or fixed step amounts at fixed intervals. There's no per-second streaming like Sablier – UNCX vesting is checkpoint-based.

UNCX strengths

• Bundled LP locker + token vesting – the only one of the three that natively lets a project lock both LP and team tokens through the same UI/contract suite.
• Token-launch fit – projects launching on Uniswap/PancakeSwap who need to demonstrate rug-pull protection use UNCX because that's what audit firms and exchanges expect to see.
• Wide chain coverage – Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Base, plus more chain-specific deployments than Sablier or Hedgey.
• Reasonable claim costs – the contract is simpler than Hedgey's NFT path, so gas at claim time is competitive with Sablier.

UNCX weaknesses

• Less polished recipient UX – the dashboard works but feels older than Sablier's. Discovering whether you have a vest with UNCX often requires the project's pointer rather than self-discovery.
• Two contract variants is confusing – TokenVesting vs VestingManager means recipients sometimes claim from the wrong UI and miss positions. (Vestream merges both behind a single 'UNCX' tracker for exactly this reason.)
• Not associated with crypto-native DAOs – Sablier has the DAO/protocol audience; UNCX has the token-launch audience. Cultural fit matters when picking.

Decision framework – which one to use?

Strip away the marketing and the choice usually comes down to three questions:

1. 1Do you need transferability? If yes (typically institutional investors who want to move SAFT positions between funds), use Hedgey. Sablier and UNCX bind vests to the original recipient address.
2. 2Do you also need an LP locker? If yes (token launches, rug-protection signalling), use UNCX. Sablier and Hedgey are vesting-only.
3. 3Otherwise, default to Sablier – most battle-tested, lowest gas, polished UX, dominant DAO adoption.

Many real projects use combinations. A typical token launch might use Sablier for team vesting (because the team trusts the protocol), Hedgey for institutional investor allocations (because investors want NFT transferability), and UNCX for LP locks (because exchanges audit for that specifically). This is fine – the only downside is recipients then need to check three dashboards. Or one aggregator (like ours).

What's identical across all three

It's worth being explicit about what these protocols do not differ on, because it cuts down decision fatigue:

• Security model – all three are audited by major firms. None has had a critical exploit affecting deposited funds.
• Pull-based claims – recipients always have to call a transaction to claim. None of them auto-distributes tokens to wallets.
• On-chain enforcement – schedules cannot be changed after deployment (with rare exceptions for cancelable streams). The smart contract is the source of truth.
• ERC-20 only – none of them currently support vesting NFTs or other token standards. If you need to vest a Bored Ape, you'll need a different solution.

How Vestream tracks all three

We built Vestream specifically because crypto users frequently have vestings across multiple protocols and don't want to check three or four dashboards every month. Paste any wallet address and Vestream queries Sablier's subgraph, Hedgey's subgraph, both UNCX variants, and six other protocols in parallel – returning every active vesting in under three seconds.

On the protocol pages we maintain – /protocols/sablier, /protocols/hedgey, /protocols/uncx – you can see live TVL, stream counts, and the upcoming unlock calendar. We don't favour one over another; the goal is to make it boring to track all of them.

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