Nine token-free protocols to farm points now
Push a button, don't push a button. Trigger a station, switch channels.
In the cryptocurrency industry, the rewards for clicking a button are higher than in any other industry.
Participate in a protocol early, deposit some SOL, exchange a few times? You can get a $10,000 airdrop. I once made $120,000 just by filling out a Google form (Inverse Finance airdrop).
While the cryptocurrency market may seem boring and dominated by macro factors, there are still new token-less protocols worth trying. Here are nine of them!
Note : This article is not sponsored content. However, in the interest of mutual benefit, I reached out to the team to get additional benefits for my referral link.
Disclaimer :
The above content is for reference only and does not constitute financial advice. DeFi has risks, including smart contract vulnerabilities, asset volatility, and potential loss of funds. Please do your own research (DYOR) and assess the risks before interacting with any protocol.
1. Ostium
Perpetual exchanges are a highly competitive field, with leaders constantly changing (dydx → GMX → Hyperliquid).
But Ostium is different. It introduces leveraged trading of traditional financial assets such as the S&P 500, Dow Jones, Nikkei, gold, copper, etc., and brings these assets to the chain.
These “RWAs” are not actually backed by physical assets, but Ostium provides on-chain synthetic price exposure through oracle price feeds. Built on Arbitrum.
As far as I know, this isn’t the first attempt, but Ostium is getting good traction:
- Ostium Liquidity Pool (OLP) TVL reaches $46 million, functions similarly to Hyperliquid’s HLP, and is used to generate trading and liquidation fees
- 845 users per day, 2,225 users per week
- Total transaction volume reached US$2.1 billion
See Dune for full data.
Ostium will issue points to traders and OLP depositors starting March 31.
I think even on-chain RWA trading of synthetic assets has huge potential for many crypto-native users. It eliminates the need to withdraw stablecoins to traditional financial platforms.
Early users may receive generous airdrops.
2. Axiom
You may have heard of Solana trading platforms such as Photon, BullX, GMGN, and BonkBot.
But they are outdated.
Axiom, which was backed by Y Combinator and launched in February, now dominates the category (44%, see the dark blue portion of the chart below).
Trading bots on Solana by Adam_tehc
Interestingly, Axiom’s official X account and co-founders are very low-key on X and rarely post. Marketing seems to be spread by word of mouth.
Additionally, Axiom’s ultimate goal is to trade any asset on any chain, including perpetual contracts (via Hyperliquid), yield protocols, wallet tracking, and more.
Axiom will benefit greatly when Solana trading frenzy returns.
Points are earned through transactions, tasks, and referrals. I am looking forward to Axiom's tokens.
👉Start trading through my referral link and earn points.
3. Fragmetric
Let’s not talk about trading applications for now.
Fragmetric reminds me of the early days of Solana DeFi in 2023/24, which culminated in the generous Jito and Jupiter airdrops.
If you missed out on Solayer (because LAYER did go up after the airdrop), this is also your second chance.
I have two pieces of news about Fragmetric:
The bad news : we’re not too early, as deposits open from October 2024.
Good news : We are not too late, as the tokens are not yet live, points are still accumulating, and most deposits started coming in in late January. This is a simple "deposit and farm" project.
Fragmetric is a liquidity re-staking protocol based on Solana.
When you deposit SOL or LST into Fragmetric, you get LRT in return, such as fragSOL or fragJTO.
Re-stakers become SANG (SolanA Network Guard), a community that protects the Solana ecosystem. You can also get additional rewards by protecting NCN/AVS (new decentralized services).
This is a very simple strategy if you have some spare SOL and want to spread the risk of Kamino, Marginfi, and Solayer.
TVL has reached $125M, so it’s not too early :(
F-score
F-Points is Fragmetric's loyalty system, which can be earned simply by holding LRT.
You can also earn bonus points by wrapping LRT like wfragSOL for DeFi.
Fragmetric has raised a total of $12 million in funding, with the latest $5 million round coming from RockawayX, Robot Ventures, Amber Group and BitGo.
TL;DR : Super easy SOL farming.
👉Join through my referral link and let me earn some airdrops too. Thank you very much!
4. Loopscale
Loopscale now lets you earn even more on your newly acquired fragSOL. More on this later.
Loopscale brings innovation to Solana DeFi with modular, order-book-based lending.
This is different from the liquidity pool model used by Kamino, Marginfi, and even Aave:
“By replacing liquidity pools and algorithmic interest rates with direct order book matching, Loopscale improves capital efficiency, enables more precise risk management, and supports new types of markets that are difficult to achieve with traditional DeFi architectures.” — Loopscale documentation
You can borrow, recycle (one-click leverage, like Kamino's multiply) or add to a vault.
Since Loopscale ended closed beta 5 days ago, they’ve launched the Genesis Vault, which offers 6x points until the cap is reached (not much left!).
A simple strategy is to get an annualized return of 22%+ through the JUPSOL cycle (similar to Kamino's multiply). You can get 2 times the points.
I asked them about the decoupling. They said that the short-term LST/LRT decoupling will not liquidate your circular position, "but it may liquidate if the staking yield is lower than the borrowing cost or the validator performs poorly."
If you are more aggressive and want to get a 32% annualized return through SOL, you can try the following strategy:
- Deposit SOL at Fragmetric .
- Get PT-fragSOL at Exponent (Pendle of Solana).
- Cycle PT-fragSOL on Loopscale and get an annualized return of 32%.
Note : You will give up Fragmetric's bonus points, but get a higher fixed annualized return on Loopscale.
The current TVL is about $40 million, which is still in its early stages.
Loopscale has powerful backers: CoinFund, Solana Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Jump, and Room40.
5. Upshift
Do you feel that DeFi is becoming more and more complicated and finding high-yield opportunities is becoming more and more time-consuming?
don’t worry.
On Upshift, you can deposit your crypto into vaults managed by “established hedge funds” and investment managers.
Income strategies include recycling, delta-neutral hedging, OTC options or systemic stablecoin DEX market making.
Upshift has four core products:
- Lending : Providing on-chain overcollateralized loans to verified institutions
- DeFi Yield : Top DeFi Funds Curate Vaults
- Vault as a Service : Plug and Play Vaults for Protocols
- Synergy : Improving yield and capital efficiency through lending vaults
See the documentation for more information.
As of writing, the TVL is $236 million. They offer 5x bonus until deposits reach $750 million.
Honestly, my favorite strategy is Hyperbeat Ultra HYPE, which manages my HYPE yield farming in the HyperEVM ecosystem.
Backers include Dragonfly VC, Hack VC, 6MV and Robot Ventures.
No referral links ! Go directly to the official website .
6. Level
If you hold stablecoins, please note:
Level is a stablecoin protocol that issues lvlUSD - a stablecoin backed by USDC and USDT that generates yield through a blue chip lending protocol.
You deposit USDC → USDC is deposited in Aave/Morpho etc. → You get lvlUSD, which can be used in other DeFi protocols.
You can simply stake lvlUSD for appreciated slvlUSD and earn an annualized return of 8.48%.
But to earn XP points, you need to farm lvlUSD in DeFi protocols: deposit lvlUSD into Curve, Spectra or Pendle (current PT yield is 13%), etc.
As of writing, TVL is $138.26 million, which is a good performance. Level’s X account is also growing in followers, which is a good sign when the token is launched.
Backers include Dragonfly VC and Polychain.
Level is not the first protocol to try this model, and many have failed. But with impressive earnings and an upcoming airdrop, this could be a promising opportunity.
👉Use my super referral link to get 30% XP bonus.
7. Huma
Stablecoins and RWAs are the hottest narratives, but exposure is hard to come by. Wait for Circle IPO, but don’t expect to get 10x in a day.
Huma is a payment finance (PayFi) network that recently raised $38 million from Hashkey Capital, Folius Ventures, Stellar, and others.
Previously, it merged with Circle-backed protocol Arf, which provides liquidity and settlement services for cross-border payments.
Huma is unique in that:
Payments take days, are expensive, and banks make most of the profits. Huma uses blockchain and stablecoins (USDC) to enable instant, global, and low-cost money movement.
Huma connects global investors through USDC, helping businesses and individuals borrow against future income.
How it works:
- Businesses (such as suppliers) can get immediate cash by tokenizing future payments (accounts receivable).
- Investors fund these tokens and earn a return from interest and fees.
In other words, businesses tokenize future revenue (unpaid invoices).
Investors finance these assets in advance, and repayments come directly from actual cash flow (when invoices are paid).
There are currently zero defaults because Huma focuses on high-quality payment flows. Investors’ returns come from actual business activities, not speculation or DeFi leverage cycles.
Huma data is available at Dune .
Currently, Huma:
- Providing 10.5% annualized return on USDC
- PayFi transaction volume reaches $74.7 million, generating revenue
- Holds $7.2 million in emergency liquid assets (stablecoins) that do not generate income
Therefore, the TVL reached US$81 million, which is a good performance.
As always, the real fun is in the tokens.
Earn Huma Points (Feathers) by depositing USDC on Solana.
The longer you lock up your funds (3-6 months = higher rewards).
Select "Maxi Mode" (more Feathers, no annualized return. Details ).
8. DeFi App
You may often see DeFi App promotions on timeline X. Not only the number of promotions, but also the way of promotion makes me a little... uh.
This always makes me more cautious and gives me a weird intuition.
But there are reasons to be optimistic:
- Became the third largest DEX aggregator, with a daily trading volume of $229 million and a weekly trading volume of $991 million
- Raised $6 million at a $100 million valuation from Mechanism Capital, Selini Capital, North Rock Digital and about 50 angel investors
- I am actually the leader of their Degen Arena faction! (More on this later)
DeFi App is an all-in-one super app that simplifies DeFi.
From the Beta version, cross-chain swaps are very easy to use. No annoying gas fees, support for Solana and EVM chains. In the future, functions such as yield farming and perpetual trading will be added.
Their token HOME is not yet live, you can farm it by simply exchanging tokens.
That's all you can do for now, BUT!!! You can earn points in Degen Arena by joining factions.
Eli5defi’s X tweets about DeFi App
Thread by Eli5defi on DeFi App on X
The top 50 factions will receive extra rewards and early access to new features. Why join a faction? In Season 1 of Degen Arena, $HOME allocations are bigger:
- 60% of the first season XP goes to the faction XP pool
- 40% of the season rewards go to the faction bonus pool
I'm currently ranked 38th, so if you join the arena using my referral link and swap, we all benefit, especially me.
9. Slingshot
If there was one mobile app that could swap all tokens across all chains, it might be Slingshot.
Before you try, you need to know:
- Creating an account is super easy, just like a Web2 app
- Magic Eden recently acquired Slingshot, reducing the possibility of a Slingshot token airdrop :(
- Soon you will be able to exchange Bitcoin for Rune tokens, which is the key reason why I like this app
Therefore, if you primarily trade cryptocurrencies on mobile, Slingshot is a must-try app.
