I’ve been trading with leverage on perp dexes for potential airdrops. In the past, I’ve analyzed order book data and built machine learning models to support traders, but I’ve never traded myself. Without these potentially juicy airdrops dangling in front of me, I probably would’ve never started trading. Because the market has been pumping and I have the beginner’s luck, I have generated the consensus minimal volume requirement ($10K) and made money across all my accounts. It is really just all luck because I did not read any books, although I bought a couple, nor did I watch any YouTube videos. I don’t know TA. I just connected my wallet and looked at the chart and placed orders. I only traded SOL-USDC, ARB-USDC, and ETH-USDC because I had been looking at their price charts every day for months and used them to time LP entries and help set position ranges. Nonetheless, I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I need to write them down for my future self.
Your order may not get filled due to technical failures. I don’t know if DYDX or GMX is immune to this, but the newer on-chain perp dexes I used for airdrop couldn’t fill orders during a flash crash or when trading got heated.
I tend to take profit early, but do feel regret when price keeps going up after. But because I took profit early, I was able to avoid the flash crash. So I should and will keep taking profit early. Just don’t look at price action within 12 hours after taking profit.
It’s expensive to trade on these perp dexes. A 5x - 7x leveraged limit order can cost between $2 ~ $4. When LPing, sometimes it can take 1 day to earn $1. I guess it’s cheaper to trade on CEXes?
It can be lucrative. For example, there was a time when the stars all lined-up, using only 5x leverage, I made $30 ~ $87 per account across 11 accounts in 18 hours. I funded $60 ~ $500 per account. That’s way more efficient than LPing.
You can get wiped out. Although I haven’t experienced it, it is almost surely I will experience it at least once if I keep playing and gaining. There was one time price fell below my liquidation point, at least shown on the chart when I was looking at it, but my positions wasn’t liquidated. Don’t know why and didn’t investigate.
If you long and price falls, you will feel anxious. On the other hand, say if you enter a ETH-USDC LP position single-sided from the top with USDC, when ETH price falls, you feel happy because now it’s in your range and you are earning fees.
Perp Dex Airdrop Farming Opportunities
Below is a list of perp dexes I’m farming. (Links contain my refs. Use them to get 4% ~ 10% discount and support this newsletter.) All are without a token. Some confirmed an airdrop, and some are rumored. I hope I can get a fat airdrop from all of them.
Merkle Trade on Aptos. I just started this one today. Farming it with 2 wallets, one with $500 (trading) and the one with $300 (LPing). There are 15 days left for season 1. Airdrop is confirmed and you can read the details here. I’m also farming the Aptos ecosystem airdrop so it’s two birds with one stone. By the way, I think Aptos is underfarmed. If you want to see an article on how to farm Aptos, drop a comment below to let me know.
Hyperliquid on Arbitrum. I was in their private beta and algo-traded with python by modifying a simply strategy they published early on. Farmed it with two wallets and funded each wallet with $15. Only got in the gold league on one wallet with 117 points at rank 3893.
Perennial on Arbitrum. I haven’t traded on it but I put $3300 in their LP vaults to farm ARB passively (great APR) and hopefully can double-dip when they drop a token. I think they are giving out even more ARBs to traders.
Aevo on Arbitrum. Airdrop confirmed. I’m only doing 1 wallet with an initial deposit of $500.
Drift and Zeta on Solana. Zeta does a better job at order-filling during busy times. Fees are on the cheaper side. I’m doing 5 wallets. So that’s 10 accounts in total. Funded each account with $90 ~ $300.
Logx on Mantle. I haven’t started on it. Discovered it yesterday while doing orderly network quests. Seems like it uses orderly network as a building layer. So trading on it will probably give both airdrops. If you are using it, feel free to drop your ref in the comment session.
would love that Aptos farming article :)