For years I was on one side of the airdrop game: a little here, a little there, dozens of projects at once.
The result? Blurry. Small wins, small losses, never a real position in anything. 😶
Now I want to try the other side: pick a project and grind it as rationally as possible, all the way to TGE.
I chose 2: @risextrade and @TxFlow_L1 . Here’s what I know. 👇
🔹 RISEx
→ What: a fully onchain perp DEX on RISE Chain, an Ethereum L2, backed by Galaxy Ventures, Vitalik Buterin, EtherFi and others.
→ Traction: $3B+ cumulative volume, $26M+ open interest and $15M+ TVL before the public points program.
→ Points: Season 1 “Ignite” started on 20 July 2026, with a fixed 200,000 points per week. Referrers get +10% of their referees’ points. 100% of points go to users, and the season ends no later than Q2 2027.
→ What counts: total costs (fees, slippage, negative markouts), volume, open interest and hold time.
→ TGE: no token, date or conversion formula published yet. RISEx Launches ‘Ignite’ Season 1 Points Program, Following $3B in Volume During the Early Access Phase - Bling Headlines +6
🔹 TxFlow
→ What: a financial Layer 1 whose first Channel is a fully onchain order book perp DEX, built so perps, spot and prediction markets can share liquidity.
→ Launch: mainnet and invite-only access started on 16 April 2026.
→ Token: officially no investor token allocation, and no TGE announced as of early October.
→ Points: Season 1 was announced on 28 September. Trades before S1 are said to be recognized, and wash trading and multi-accounting are banned. TxFlow: A Perp DEX Built Around Shared Liquidity +3
🔹 How I’ll grind: minimize cost, maximize consistency
Spreading myself thin cost me twice: in fees and in focus. So the rules are:
→ Track cost per point. (Fees + funding + slippage) ÷ points earned. If it’s rising, I change the setup.
→ Hedge, don’t guess. Delta-neutral and long/short pairs, with a 0-fee venue on one leg where possible.
→ Prefer maker orders. Same volume, a fraction of the fees.
→ Small size, controlled leverage. One liquidated leg can erase weeks of work.
→ Be consistent. Hold time and open interest count, so I’m not churning.
🔹 The part I never forget
Everything can go against the plan. 🫡
→ Neither project has confirmed a token or a conversion rate.
→ Points are not a promise. TxFlow’s rules can still change.
→ The pool is fixed, so as more farmers arrive, each point is worth less.
→ After TGE the token can launch below expectations. I’ve lived that with Backpack: a year of work, a valuation a tenth of what I counted on.
So I only put in what I can afford to lose, and I treat any reward as a bonus, not a plan.
I’ve seen what spreading thin gives. Now I’m going to see what focus gives.
I chose this path, and I’m following it.🔔
2024 - @HyperliquidX
2025 - @Lighter_xyz
2026 - @variational_io
2027 - ???????????
Three early projects. Every time I told myself the same thing: “next time I’ll focus properly.”
I wasn’t absent. I was there, just never focused and all-in. 👇
→ Hyperliquid: $50 and two weeks of activity. I moved on, and half a year later it paid ~$1,400. Meanwhile, the average wallet got ~2,915 HYPE, about $28,500 at $9.8.
→ Lighter: a hedge leg next to Backpack. About one month of real effort, ~$7,200. And the question that keeps coming back: what if it had been my main project for 6-7 months?
→ Variational: hedge leg again. Same pattern.
Meanwhile, my main focus went to the loudest project. Backpack: ~$1,500 and a year of belief. 😶
The lesson is simple and a bit painful:
The best projects don’t announce themselves. You find them early, and you commit while nobody is talking about them.
So 2027 will be different. I’m focusing on two early projects and treating them as my main job: @risextrade and @TxFlow_L1
Why these two:
→ RISEx just launched Ignite Season 1, distributing 200,000 points per week, and by its own announcement 100% of points go to users.
→ TxFlow is still in the quiet phase. Small crowd, easy points, and nobody fighting over them yet.
My plan:
→ Max effort, with hedged setups
→ A 0-fee venue on one leg to keep cost per point low
→ Consistent activity, small size, no reckless leverage
Could it all end with nothing? Of course. I’ve been there, and I’ll never pretend otherwise. 🫡
But I’ve now learned one thing for sure: the only way to miss it is to not be in the game.
Next post: a full breakdown of both projects, how I’m farming them, and what I think the risks are.
Follow so you don’t miss it. 🔔
5 ways to farm perp DEXs. Real fees, real examples, real downsides. 👇
Every number below is per $10k position, open + close. Fees are base tier.
1️⃣ Directional trading (Hyperliquid)
✅ Simplest setup, real volume, and you can actually profit
❌ Base fees are 0.045% taker and 0.015% maker, so $9 as a taker round trip. At 10x, a ~10% move against you is liquidation
2️⃣ Delta-neutral across 2 DEXs (Variational + Nado)
✅ Little directional risk, and you build volume + OI on both
❌ Variational charges zero maker/taker fees and earns from the spread. Nado base rates are 3.5 bps taker and 1 bp maker, so $7 / $2 on the Nado leg. Funding gaps and one-leg liquidation still exist.
Same idea with Lighter: Standard accounts pay zero fees, but with small added latency. That’s why I like a 0-fee venue on one side. It cuts the cost per point.
3️⃣ Funding capture
✅ Funding can pay you to hold. Illustrative: 0.01% per 8h is ~$3/day on $10k. Hyperliquid settles funding hourly.
❌ Rates flip sign. One day you collect, the next you pay
4️⃣ Pair hedge on one venue (long ETH / short BTC on Hyperliquid)
✅ One account, no bridging between DEXs
❌ 4 fills = $18 as a taker, ~$6 as a maker. Correlation breaks in sharp moves.
5️⃣ Maker (limit) orders
✅ Same volume at a third of the cost: $1.50 vs $4.50 per fill on Hyperliquid, $1 vs $3.50 on Nado.
❌ No fill, or price runs you over.
Why it matters: RISEx’s Season 1 points weigh total costs (fees, slippage, negative markouts), volume, open interest and hold time. Churning volume gets you less than you think. dailycoin
So the only metric that counts is cost per point:
(fees + funding + slippage) ÷ points earned.
A boring setup at $0.50 per point beats a “clever” one at $5.
My own setups are Lighter + Backpack and Variational + Nado, long/short, with the 0-fee venue on one leg to keep costs down.
And remember: every method loses if the project pays little. Size small, check funding before you open anything, and run what you can maintain for months. 😶
Not financial advice. 🫡
Most people think farming perp DEXs means you have to be a good trader.
You don't. 👇
TomCryptoDefi just broke down 4 ways to farm TxFlow without trying to predict the market: spread arbitrage, correlated pairs, and delta-neutral setups. Worth reading in full.
I want to add my own angle, because I've been doing the same thing for a while: hedging instead of guessing direction.
My setups:
→ Lighter + Backpack: long on one, short on the other. Lighter has 0 fees, which makes the whole thing much cheaper to run.
→ Variational + Nado: same idea, long/short across both. Variational has 0 fees too.
The logic is simple. One leg wins, the other loses, and what stays is the activity: volume and open interest on both platforms. 💡
Why I like zero-fee venues for this: when you farm points, cost per point is everything. If one side of your hedge costs nothing to trade, your expenses drop a lot, and you can stay active for months instead of weeks.
A few things I'd add to any strategy like this:
→ Check fees first. Zero-fee on one side changes the math completely.
→ Watch funding rates. They can quietly eat your position if you hold too long.
→ "Delta-neutral" is not "risk-free." One leg can still get liquidated if you size it badly or run too much leverage.
→ Keep it simple. A boring setup you can maintain beats a clever one you abandon after two weeks.
→ Be early. The best time to farm is while nobody is talking about the project yet.
And the honest part: hedging doesn't guarantee a reward. Every project decides its own points and token rules, and some farms end up paying very little. 😶
So treat these strategies as a way to keep your risk small and your costs low while you wait, not as a promise.
If you're in a hidden season right now, this is your window. Read Tom's breakdown, pick one approach, and cap your risk.
Systematic beats lucky. Early beats late. Consistency beats both. 🫡