Greetings, fellow crypto fanatics!
X-mas is right around the corner and the whole crypto market took a deep dive while also bouncing back pretty nicely. I was there with my stables to add to certain spot positions as well as to buy some new tokens.
One of these was the good old $FTM. The Fantom blockchain has been around for a while now and is starting to make headlines again with its rebranding to Sonic. Less than a month ago I wrote an article about the Sonic testnets, Arcade & Blaze. Since then, Sonic mainnet has gone live and we are now able to migrate $FTM to the new native token, $S, which can already be staked for an APR of around 15%.
The Airdrop
I'm pretty sure Sonic will be rewarding those who farmed their testnets at least in some way but let's be honest here, usually the biggest allocation goes to those who use real money to interact with chains. Stake, lend, borrow, LP, and so on.
Very often at this point, after the free testing, I've just stopped and crossed my fingers for future allocations to free farmers but with Sonic, I'm instead planning to increase my activity now on mainnet. Why?
Well, to begin with, the Sonic airdrop total allocation is worth a whopping $250 million. Secondly, the airdrop meta isn't dead and we've seen some very good ones delivered lately such as Movement, Grass, and the biggest of them all - Hyperliquid. So in my opinion, it's a great time to put on your farming gloves, focus on a couple of big ones and go to work.
How To Interact With Sonic
First, you need to get some $FTM. It can be bought on various exchanges across the space. After you have some you can withdraw it to your EVM wallet such as MetaMask or Rabby.
Next, go to MySonic which is kind of your dashboard and gateway to the chain and connect your wallet. Here you'll find all the dapps and can stake and upgrade(swap) your $FTM to $S in 1:1.
The staking(delegating) option is already live although I haven't personally tried it yet as I first want to explore all the dapps and consider my approach to farming Sonic.
Points
There are two ways of acquiring points:
- General use of Sonic - Bridging liquidity to Sonic and actively using the chain:
- Passive liquidity points reward users for bridging primary assets onto the Sonic mainnet. Users earn points based on the value and type of assets they hold, providing an incentive for maintaining liquidity within the ecosystem.
- Activity points offer a multiplier on top of passive liquidity points, encouraging users to actively engage with the ecosystem. By deploying their assets into any whitelisted application, users can enhance their point earnings, driving greater participation and utility within the network.
- Sonic Gems:
- Sonic has selected 30 projects(dapps) and by using these, you'll earn Gem Points which are later distributed by the dapps.
- Apps are placed in three tiers: Emerald, Sapphire, and Ruby. The full list of these apps can be found here.
- To take part in the Gem airdrop, simply use the selected apps. Since the apps will decide their own distribution rules, I think a good approach would be to choose just a few favourite ones, focus on those, and keep following their progress on socials.
Wen Claim, Sir?
The actual airdrop will take place on June 2025 when users can claim 25% of their allocation. The remaining 75% will be vested over 270 days in the form of an NFT. Users can choose to claim their vested position early by burning some of their allocations.
Alternatively, users who choose to hold their airdrop NFT positions can trade them on a speculative NFT marketplace if desired, adding a layer of utility and flexibility.
The quote above which is taken from the Sonic blog post is also pretty interesting as it will separate the hasty ones from the diamond hands. Then again, a lot will depend on the market sentiment we'll be having later on in the year 2025. Interesting plays could happen here.
Conclusion
My strategy will be to focus on 1-3 dapps I like the most and actually try to increase my bags with defi activities and trading. So perhaps the best approach here is to "forget" the points and just interact normally with the projects we like.
Even though Sonic has a very promising airdrop aspect, I simply don't have time to constantly keep jumping from one app to another while chasing points. They'll probably add up sufficiently enough with regular use. If calculating and maximizing points is your thing, there's plenty of data on the Socic Insights blog post.
The potential of Sonic airdrop is indeed good but it's hard to predict the outcome at this point. Still, if you are active on defi and trading, it wouldn't be such a bad idea to migrate from other platforms to Sonic and continue doing what you're doing while semi-passively farming airdrop points on the side.
Just like many other airdrops, nothing is guaranteed but the potential in Sonic is huge.
Thank you for reading and happy holidays! I'll take a little X-mas break from blogging but will keep publishing the latest crypto news & alpha on the Greener Candles threadcast daily on Inleo! So see you there. 🎅🎄
🔹 Holozing is an upcoming play-2-earn game on Hive - get in before the launch!
🔹 Grass - $GRASS token launch surprised everyone, don't miss the second season!
DISCLAIMERS:
This is NOT financial advice.
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