How did VCs secretly obtain excess returns before the tokens were unlocked?

In one case, Polychain invested about $20 million in Celestia's Series A and Series B financing, but sold more than $82 million worth of TIA through staking rewards before the tokens were unlocked, achieving a return on investment of more than 4 times.

They were really sneaky. They told the leeks that the team and the institution's coins were not unlocked, but secretly used staking rewards to attract leeks to buy coins and pledge to increase the market value, and at the same time allowed their own unlocked coins to participate in staking to obtain a large number of chips to throw to retail investors.