Before we get started, this is not a recommendation or endorsement to buy any token(s) mentioned.
For weeks, Solana has occupied all of our attention with one of the largest airdrops in the history of crypto thanks to Jito.
10% of its 1 billion token supply was airdropped all at once, worth an estimated $200M the day of JTO token launch and now closer to $290M at a price of $2.90/JTO.
Stories of individuals receiving $10k-$80k as an airdrop went viral and only compounded the mania of interest in Solana DeFi.
If we consider which existing Solana DeFi protocols have the most liquidity, the most common use cases, and have yet to tokenize, it leaves us with a short list of protocols to test drive with some liquidity in the hopes we might earn a future airdrop.
In the case of JTO, users earned Jito Points and were split into tiers, meaning users didn’t have to deposit the most liquidity or stake the longest. The smallest airdrop was worth ~5,000 JTO tokens for just 100 Jito Points.
This same approach to scoring based on ranges could play out with other Solana airdrops, which is why we’ll cover Drift today!
Launched in 2021, Drift Protocol is a decentralized exchange built on Solana to enable transparent and non-custodial trading of cryptoassets. With cross-margin and multi-collateral accounts supported, users can trade perpetual swaps with up to 20x leverage, borrow or lend at variable rate yields, stake / provide liquidity, and swap spot tokens.
Today, Drift is a top 10 DeFi app ranked by TVL on Solana with $63M.
In the still nascent world of perps trading apps on Solana, Drift is rising above its competitors with $2.76B in total trade volume, a new high its weekly trade volume equal to $313M, and its daily users rising to over 10k unique accounts.
A few of the ways Drift differentiates itself are:
- Cheap fees and fast transaction times–what we expect on Solana!
- A robust cross-margined risk engine, designed to give traders a balance of both capital efficiency and protection
- A keeper network that enables a better UX for the best order execution (i.e. Just-In-Time (JIT) liquidity, order matching)
- A Keeper network that can route orders throughout the multi-sourced liquidity mechanisms designed to effectively scale and offer competitive pricing even with larger order sizes
In terms of a future airdrop, Drift introduced a game called Drift Draw, where users can enter for a chance to win the Grand Prize. Traders earn up to 10 tickets for every $1 in taker volume traded.
Every Monday, 1 of 3 prize pools (see below) is randomly selected to be distributed among winners. If the Grand Prize isn’t selected, the remainder is carried over to grow the prize pools the following week!
Although Drift has not confirmed this, many of us speculate that those tickets earned as traders will be considered alongside other activities such as lending, borrowing, swapping, and trader referrals on Drift.
Today, I’ll show how I can quickly create an on-chain trading account with Drift and then lend, borrow, or trade to possibly earn a future airdrop.
How to Get Started with Drift and Potentially Earn An Airdrop
Before we get started, please be aware of these risks.
- Smart contract risk in Drift
- Front-end spoof attack on the app frontend
- Liquidation…
DeFi Dad is one of the earliest power users of DeFi, having worked with early Ethereum startups going back to 2018, including Zapper.
