Before we get started, this is not a recommendation or endorsement to buy any token(s) mentioned.
The biggest Solana DeFi airdrops are upon us! Recently, Jito announced Solana’s largest retroactive airdrop this year for those who earned Jito Points including a link here to check one’s eligibility and whether they earned enough points.
With a supply of 1B JTO tokens and a 100M JTO, airdrop, it’s predicted that we could see JTO’s fully diluted valuation shoot over $1B and create a notable wealth effect for SOL holders, new JTO holders, and Solana DeFi users.
This looks like the fuel to ignite more interest in future Solana DeFi airdrops, including the 2nd most liquid lending and borrowing app, marginfi. Marginfi provides traders a global margin account for trading across all protocols on Solana.
It is one dapp for traders to take on margin and maximize the capital they put to work.
Marginfi empowers traders with products to:
- Borrow and lend margin under one global platform
- Structure complex exposure and participate in more markets
- Earn one of the highest “natural yields” staking SOL, powered by Jito’s MEV-boosted client
First announced in October 2021, MarginFi only recently launched on Solana in early 2023. It experienced monster growth in its liquidity starting in July 2023 going from just $3M TVL to over $150M TVL as of this writing.
Since July 2023, marginfi has been running a “points” program similar to what we just experienced with Jito. The program rewards lending, borrowing, and referrals.
- Every dollar lent earns 1 point per day. The more you lend, the more points you earn. The longer you lend, the more points you earn.
- Borrowers receive more points than lenders. $1 borrowed will earn 4 points per day. The collateral lent to open a borrow will count for lending points as well, meaning borrowers earn not only the boosted points from borrowing but also points from lending.
- A referring user will get 10% of the points the users they refer earn.
Today, I’ll show how I can begin farming yield with marginfi while earning points towards a likely marginfi airdrop!
How to Earn Points Towards a Future Marginfi Airdrop
Before we get started, please be aware of these risks.
- Smart contract risk in marginfi
- Front-end spoof attack on app app frontend
- Liquidation if a leveraged position is not maintained at a healthy LTV
- An economic design exploit in the design of marginfi
- Pegged tokens like mSOL or JitoSOL can depeg, causing a looped position to be liquidated or auto-deleveraged
- Colluding signers on any multisig
Here’s how I get started!
- First, I go to marginfi app under Lend and connect my Solana wallet. I can keep it simple and just lend stablecoins, SOL, mSOL, etc. As long as an asset is supported and not at 100% market supply capacity, I can start earning points by just lending.
- For this example, let’s assume I want to also borrow a correlated asset to earn even more marginfi points (4x the points for borrowing). I’ll opt to deposit a collateral like mSOL that’s earning yield so I can borrow another SOL LST or maybe just SOL against it. I specify how much to Supply and follow the prompts on my Solana wallet to confirm.
- Lastly, I click over to the Borrow tab to review the options for borrowing and what rates…
DeFi Dad is one of the earliest power users of DeFi, having worked with early Ethereum startups going back to 2018, including Zapper.
