How Does the “Token Lock-up” Period Affect the Viability of a PoS Attack?

A token lock-up period, often part of a vesting schedule for founders or early investors, can temporarily reduce the circulating supply available for an attacker to acquire. If a significant portion of the total supply is locked up, the attacker needs to purchase a majority of the remaining, smaller circulating supply to achieve 51% control.

This can make the attack cheaper in terms of the total tokens required, but the resulting market impact (price spike) is likely to be much more severe due to the lower liquidity.