Introduction

According to Crypto Twitter, perp dex farming remains the last standing DeFi vertical worth airdrop farming. Other sectors, like stablecoins, are less interesting due to their small valuations and low airdrop percentages at TGE. On the perp dex side of things, however, Hyperliquid set a precedent for a large allocation to early traders and is trading at a massive valuation. As a result of this, as well as Lighter's TGE in December, traders are trying to accumulate as many perp dex points as possible, hoping one of the 30 tokenless perp dexs can find sticky adoption and a large valuation post TGE.

Unfortunately, this also means that very little edge remains, and most perp dex farms likely will end up costing more in fees and slippage than what will be earned from the airdrop (e.g., Paradex which recently TGEd at a tiny $40m valuation). There are, however, still ways to maximize your odds of hitting a large airdrop in this competitive environment. Today's post will cover this as well as the top perp dexs to keep an eye on currently. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already as a part 2 of this is coming in a couple of weeks.

Sponsor - Kamino Finance

Today's report is sponsored by Kamino Finance. Kamino is quickly becoming the central DeFi hub for real-world assets. The largest of these markets is PRIME by Figure which sources yield from home equity lines of credit and delivers a fixed yield of 8%.

This market has grown to over half a billion dollars in less than a year in large part due to the high yield obtainable (often above 20%) by looping PRIME against USDC or CASH.

Other RWA markets include Maple (institutional lending) at nearly $300m, OnRe (Reinsurance markets), Superstate, xStocks, and more:

xStocks recently announced a points program for holding, providing liquidity and using borrowing and lending markets with these assets. Note that this is on top of the current Kamino incentives on the xStocks market which makes it free to borrow against these. Check out these markets and more on Kamino.

Being Early

A little over a year ago, I posted the following:

This applies especially to perp dexs for one particular reason: most of the points programs have a fixed amount of points distributed every week. This is different from e.g., stablecoin airdrops which often have points programs with emissions structured more like 'x points per dollar deposited per day'.

Roughly 3 weeks after the tweet above was posted, Lighter went live on mainnet with their private beta campaign offering 250,000 points weekly. Despite everyone seeing the large wealth effect created by the Hyperliquid airdrop, just two months prior, there was very little competition on Lighter, allowing you to farm 5 figs worth of tokens per week for a few weeks before activity began to pick up.

While very few of the current perp dexs will be able to launch at a valuation similar to Lighter, focusing your effort on the first few weeks of a points program instead of grinding for a whole year, competing with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of other traders for points presents a much better expected return.

With that being said, below are some perp dexs that are either early or that we believe to be in the early part of their growth stage.

Equity (RWA) Perps

Tradexyz

Tradexyz is a HIP-3 perp dex built on top of Hyperliquid and the largest platform for equity, commodity, and forex perps. Tradexyz went live in the second half of last year and has experienced massive growth in the past few months. This comes as a result of 'HIP-3 growth mode', which reduced trading fees on Tradexyz by 90% as well as the large volatility in commodities.

Tradexyz is a unique farm in the sense that there is no official points program or hint at a token. Last summer, rumours were circulating that they raised from Paradigm but these are just that, rumours. This presents an opportunity, however, as if they had an official points program, the competition would likely be orders of magnitude higher.

QFEX

Staying in the realm of equity perps, QFEX is an under-the-radar 24/7 RWA perp dex which just went live. What stands out about QFEX is their approach to building a tradfi exchange on blockchain rails. The QFEX team consists of former high-frequency traders at various HFT firms like Tower and Jump and just announced a $9.5m funding round led by General Catalyst.

You can sign up to QFEX here (and get a 10% discount on fees)

QFEX differs from other perp dexs in several ways due to their tradfi-oriented design such as requiring KYC for users wishing to deposit >$1000. This, however, also makes the farm less prone to a swarm of wash-trading bots and likely offers better airdrop EV as a manual perp dex trader.

QFEX is currently in private mainnet and will open up access gradually in the coming weeks. There is currently no official points program but the following screenshot was taken from their Discord:

It is still very early days for QFEX with a couple of million dollars in total open interest but I would not be surprised to see this become one of the larger competitors for equity and commodities trading this year.

Crypto Perps

01

01 is a new perp dex that recently went live and is picking up traction.

They are currently on week 5 of their points program and in private mainnet. The total points distribution looks as following:

In order to access 01, you need an invite code. You can sign up here (50 codes available).

Lighter S3

Across all the perp dex farming posts I see on X, no one is mentioning Lighter anymore. Despite Lighter still being one of the leading perp dexs, it would appear that very few are farming for a potential hidden airdrop season.

Shortly before TGE in December last year, the team published an announcement on Discord which included 'S3e you at TGE'. Unless something has changed in their plans, it is likely that there is a hidden season 3 on Lighter currently.

In terms of how to optimize points earning on Lighter, I suggest using and trading their new products, as that was a good strategy last year before the TGE.

Conclusion

Given the current market environment, farming perp dexs is no longer low-risk strategy that guarantees to reward you with a handsome airdrop. While the addressable market for perps, and especially equity perps, is huge it now requires some skill to farm these profitably. Part 2 is scheduled to go out in a couple of weeks with a deeper focus on equity perps. Make sure to subscribe so you miss it.