Perhaps the best investment I've made this year was joining and depositing $USDT on Altura. During Q1, we have witnessed a bloody red crypto season with almost every volatile asset down badly. Meanwhile, my Altura position is up 4.21% ($10.5 earned with a $249 initial deposit). On top of that, I've also earned $38 worth of $ALTU tokens. 30% of these will be available at TGE, the rest is vested.
So how does it work?
Altura is truly DeFi made simple. All you have to do is deposit some $USDT in the Altura vault, or in other words, mint AVLT, which then represents your position. These tokens are increasing in value over time, with around 20% base APY, so no rewards claiming or re-staking is required. Just sit back and enjoy!
The 20% yield comes from the USDT used in different DeFi strategies, which you can further examine on the Altura Proof of Solvency page. All in all, the Altura team has been very straightforward on transparency. For example, their physical gold arbitrage strategy is verifiable on-chain (check out this tweet).
Withdrawing from the vault is processed in 72 hours without any costs, while instant withdrawals include a 0.10% fee.
HyperEVM & Multi-Chain Support
Altura first launched on Hyperliquid's HyperEVM chain, but has since added support for other chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism.
Hyperliquid has recently hit the headlines by handling an insane amount of perps trading volume, and because of increasing institutional interest. I believe this will eventually also reflect on HyperEVM, where we should see the next phase of growth.
Altura is currently well-positioned in the top 20 Hyperliquid protocols list on DefiLlama with a huge 138% monthly TVL increase, and it's just a matter of time before moving up.
$ALTU Rewards & TGE
I really like Altura's approach to the $ALTU token airdrop. Instead of going the usual route where users have to make calculations or play the guessing game, the team chose transparency in this matter as well. Once an epoch ends, the $ALTU rewards are delivered to users. As mentioned, 30% will be available at TGE, 70% are vested and released over time.
At the moment, epoch 2 is about to end, and it's still speculative whether there will be a third one before the token genesis event. Nevertheless, a 20% APY is more than enough for me to keep on staking and adding to my position whenever I can.
I would advise keeping an eye out for any announcements from the Altura team about a possible next epoch. That would be a great time to jump in and receive a portion of $ALTU tokens plus the 20% APY yield, of course.
EDIT: Epoch 3 has just been confirmed, with a total of $75k in rewards!
Other Things Definitely Worth Mentioning
Safety always matters the most. Not only are funds on Altura overcollateralized, but they've also just implemented an institutional insurance policy with Native Insurance covering up to £5,000,000 deposits and scales up when the vault grows.
Also, the community is one of the best ones I've seen recently. It's very helpful, and the mods are quick to respond to any questions instead of just leaving things hanging around for days (which is very common with many protocols, IMO).
In addition, Altura Discord and Telegram are full of ways to earn some extra USDT, which you can then deposit into the vault (at least that's what I'm doing!). You don't need to have an excessive amount of capital to start with, but you can instead climb up the ladder by engaging in chats, helping others and posting about Altura on social media. All actions are rewarded.
Here's how it goes: every meaningful comment, raid or post earns you points that you can then exchange for real USDT once you have acquired enough. After that, it's a no-brainer to deposit your earnings to be compounded with an APY that is currently 49% (20% base + 25.88% in $ALTU rewards).
Conclusion
Since the market is what it is, I think the best plays at the moment are those done with stablecoins. Lend/borrow, concentrated liquidity pools, etc, are good DeFi opportunities, but I'm not sure they are the right choice for these kinds of market conditions.
If the situation in the Middle East should go from bad to worse, stocks would come tumbling down, and crypto would soon follow. Of course, a relief rally would be on the horizon, and to take full advantage of that, we sure would like to have some stables ready, right? Until then, I think Altura is the best possible opportunity out there to keep auto-compounding yield, so you will be ready when the time is right to go risk-on again.
Thank you for reading, and don't forget to check out other great DeFi & trading opportunities below! 👇
Follow for more on X!
🔹 Hyperliquid - the best perp DEX out there. Trade, stake & farm the next big airdrop!
🔹 Dreamcash - perps trading, points program - ref code: R7FI8M
🔹 Pacifica - under farmed perp dex on Solana. Invite code needed: 0P45XY05CW72G5YF if this has already been used, ask for more in the comments!
🔹 Altura - the best place to park your stables: +20% base APY & ~20% $ALTU rewards APY
🔹 VOLO - stake SUI to earn APR & airdrop points!
🔹 Pawtato Land - very useful SUI dashboard, earn XP for the airdrop by completing small tasks
🔹 Huma Finance - easy to farm an airdrop on Solana. Deposit USDC, earn APR % points
🔹Solstice - the best airdrop farm on Solana right now! Use ref code: tPUK2KKquW to earn 1,000 Flares