From the perspective of market laws, the market maker's liquidation is an inevitable event, and there is no doubt about that. What really causes headaches are the tactics used during the process.

There are two scenarios: if the unlocks are in the hands of the market maker, they usually operate like this—first dumping spot assets, while simultaneously shorting on the futures side, trapping retail investors on both ends to harvest their positions. What if the unlocked tokens are not held by the market maker? Then the market maker becomes even more urgent, and must crush the market before the unlock to seize the initiative.

So here comes the most tricky part. In any case, a sharp decline is certain to happen—that's standard procedure. But an even more disgusting risk is—sometimes the market maker isn't in a rush to dump, but instead chooses to hover at high levels, raising the funding rate day by day to harvest those holding positions. This kind of situation, where the market can't be pushed down and yet can't go up either, is often more torturous than a direct crash.