Gold Mining Handbook | Aptos Ecosystem Airdrop, How to Strategically Position for Multiple Gains?

Author: Alex Liu, Foresight News

The Aptos public chain was developed by some members of Facebook's former blockchain team Diem after they became independent, raising up to $350 million in funding. After a significant airdrop during the testnet phase, the Aptos mainnet has been live for over a year and a half, and the ecosystem projects are becoming increasingly mature, though most have yet to issue tokens. How can one strategize to maximize interactions and benefits within the Aptos ecosystem? This article reviews the main potential projects in this ecosystem and provides detailed interaction paths.

The top 5 protocols by TVL in the Aptos ecosystem on DefiLlama, with only Thala having issued tokens

Potential Projects

Aries Markets

Aries Markets is the largest lending protocol by TVL on Aptos and also the largest protocol across all categories by TVL. It has qualified for incentive activities from the Aptos Foundation, and currently, depositing and borrowing zUSDT and zUSDC (USDT and USDC bridged via LayerZero) in the protocol can earn APT token subsidies, with attractive interest rates. Besides obtaining airdrops, it is also a good place for daily deposits and loans.

Aries Markets has launched a points system, where depositing one dollar of assets earns 1 point daily, and borrowing one dollar of assets earns 3 points daily. The participation method is straightforward: to qualify for the Aries airdrop, you need to first visit the points page to register and bind your X (Twitter) account, then participate in depositing and borrowing in the protocol.

Points

Registering with an invitation code gives a 10% score bonus. After binding the account and setting it up correctly, the page looks like this:

Since the airdrop is based on a points system and activating the points system requires binding an X account to filter out bots, it is recommended to only use a moderate number of points, as mass point accumulation seems to have little significance.

Amnis Finance

Amnis Finance is a liquid staking protocol on APT, where users can exchange APT 1:1 for redeemable amAPT (which requires a 1-month wait, or can be exchanged back at a discount of about 1% on DEX), and further stake to earn stAPT, which accumulates staking rewards like wstETH.

The retroactive airdrop campaign of Amnis Finance is currently ongoing, with participation methods including:

• Minting amAPT and staking stAPT, earning 1 point per APT
• Holding amAPT and stAPT in your wallet, generating points hourly, with a total of 1 point per APT per month
• Providing liquidity for the amAPT-APT pair on Pancake Swap or Liquid Swap, where amAPT in the LP earns points at a 3.5x multiplier compared to simply holding it in the wallet. (Liquid Swap is recommended, as it has not yet issued tokens; see tutorial later)
• Lending stAPT to lending protocols like Aries Markets, which has a 1.2x points multiplier. (Aries also provides points bonuses for stAPT)

Various ways to participate in Amnis Finance

LiquidSwap

LiquidSwap is the first DEX on Aptos, and its project team Pontem Lumio has raised $10.5 million from well-known investors such as Mechanism, Lightspeed, Faction, and the Aptos Foundation. It is also the developer of the Ethereum L2 Lumio and the Aptos ecosystem wallet Pontem, which supports the Move language. In other words, interacting with LiquidSwap may also lead to airdrops from potential projects like Lumio.

LiquidSwap has also launched an airdrop registration page, and registration is required to participate in the airdrop. In addition to Aptos addresses, EVM addresses and Solana addresses can also be connected.

The airdrop page emphasizes that trading activity on LiquidSwap will affect the specifications for receiving airdrops.

The official has set the following trading volume tiers:

• $1-20 - coke
• $20-50 - socks
• $50-300 - ledger
• $300 - $3000 - Ticket to NBA
• $3000 - $6000 - Vision pro
• $6000 - $30000 - Vacation in the Bahamas
• $30000 - $100000 - Cybertruck
• $100000 - $10000000 - House

You can check your trading volume and tier level on LiquidSwap's Dashboard page. The page also shows the amount of liquidity provided, total number of trades, whether you are an official NFT holder (which is expensive and not recommended to purchase solely for airdrop purposes), and the amount of MEME held.

After providing liquidity in LiquidSwap's Pool, you can further stake in the Farm to earn incentives in APT and other tokens, which also yield good returns.

LiquidSwap's Farm page

Cellana

Cellana is the largest DEX on Aptos using the Ve(3,3) model, which has already conducted a token airdrop but is expected to have further airdrops.

If you participated in DeFi on the Aptos ecosystem before February 25 this year or bridged to Aptos via LayerZero between January 1 and February 25, first visit this page to check if you are eligible for the airdrop.

Cellana's airdrop is distributed in the form of veCELL NFTs, which cannot be sold immediately and require two years to fully unlock. However, they can be traded on the secondary NFT market, and weekly voting rewards can be claimed at an annualized rate of 40%.

Cellana previously conducted the first round of the second phase airdrop, which was given to liquidity providers. The LP earnings on Cellana are also high, making it worth a try.

Multi-Path Strategy 1

Mint stAPT and deposit it in Aries Markets, then borrow APT. Exchange about half of the APT for amAPT via LiquidSwap, and provide liquidity for the amAPT-APT pair on LiquidSwap.

Multi-Path Strategy 2

Deposit zUSDT/zUSDC in Aries Markets, borrow zUSDC/zUSDT, and exchange half of the borrowed stablecoin on LiquidSwap for another stablecoin to form a stablecoin pair LP to deposit in Cellana.