Sablier Lockup review

Sablier Lockup is part of Sablier, a protocol for onchain token distribution. DAOs, businesses and AI agents use it for vesting, payroll, grants and airdrops. The homepage says it is live on 24+ EVM chains, and DefiLlama lists a wider set of chains including Solana.

The homepage names Ethena, Uniswap, Fluid, Maple, Fjord and Immutable as users and reports 912,000+ transactions and 437,000+ users. These are self-reported figures. It also says Sablier was established in 2019 and lists Fenbushi, Evan Van Ness, Lito Coen and Daniel Bar among its backers.

DefiLlama files it under Payments, with about $1.87 million in TVL, down 3.1% over seven days, and shows it listed since July 2023. It has no token. The protocol is built by Sablier Labs.

A sender deposits tokens into a Sablier smart contract and defines a schedule: start, end, optional cliff and the unlock shape. The contract releases tokens over time, and the recipient can withdraw whatever has vested so far. The sender does not need to take action after setup.

Streams have defined statuses, such as pending and others described in the documentation. Bulk creation lets a team set up many streams in one transaction, which saves gas.

For airdrops, the sender uploads a recipient list and the protocol uses a Merkle-based system so recipients claim their allocation. Airdrops can be instant or streamed over time, which keeps recipients engaged instead of dumping at once.

Sablier says it offers plan options and fee splits, shown on its pricing page before you start. Specific percentages or amounts are not public used for this review, so they are not stated here.

Users should also expect normal network gas costs on whichever chain they use. Sablier describes its batch distributions as gas-efficient, but actual costs vary by chain and activity.

Sablier states its contracts are audited and unchangeable. It cites a security audit, an audit contest and five other auditors, and DefiLlama lists two audits. The code is public on GitHub. Audits reduce risk but do not remove it, and each new chain deployment adds to the exposure.

Sablier is non-custodial in the sense that tokens sit in smart contracts rather than with a company, but senders still depend on contract correctness and on entering the right parameters. The site publishes a risk notice, terms of service and a privacy policy, which are worth reading. No incidents are mentioned publicly used here.