Matching the points scoring instead of spamming volume
Each Perp DEX weights its points in its own way. Low open interest pairs, holding time, PnL, multipliers and multi-farming: what often counts, and how to work out a program's scoring.
The essentials
This content is general information, not investment advice. No program guarantees its points will convert into tokens.
Why raw volume is no longer enough
Volume is easy to manufacture: a bot, two accounts, round trips. Platforms know it. Most of them therefore weight volume, exclude part of it or compare it with other signals. Some remove points after the fact: Lighter did so after its Season 2 for behavior deemed sybil.
At Tread, for example, points were calculated on "adjusted" volume, with a minimum threshold of $100,000 a week and per-platform multipliers. Volume counted, but not all volume in the same way.
What programs often look at
The criteria vary from one platform to another and are rarely detailed. The ones that come up most:
- Volume, adjusted: weighted by pair, order type or platform.
- Fees paid: a simple way to only count volume that has a real cost.
- Open interest and holding time: keeping positions open rather than closing them right away.
- PnL: some programs seem to favor profitable trades, a sign of organic use.
- Liquidity provided: maker orders, deposits in the protocol's vault.
- Referrals: a share of referees' points, or a bonus for both.
- Consistency: activity over several weeks rather than an isolated spike.
A concrete example: Arcus
Arcus's points system is live, and its criteria are clear. In order of importance: trading (the more fees you pay, the more points you earn), market making, deposits kept on the platform and referrals. Three boosts come on top: trading stocks and RWA pairs, trading outside US market hours (evenings and weekends), and doing your swaps and holding spot tokens in the Robinhood Wallet app. Details in our Arcus guide.
Low open interest pairs
On less traded pairs, fewer farmers share the points. Many farmers see more points per dollar committed there. It's a field hypothesis, rarely confirmed by the platforms.
The flip side: less liquidity, so a wider spread, more slippage and sharper moves. Reduce your size and stick to maker orders.
Holding time and PnL
On Variational, a strategy going around (unofficial) is to make organic, profitable trades on low open interest pairs like XRP, BNB or SOL, held for about 24 hours. The general idea applies elsewhere: a position held for several hours looks more like real trading than one opened and closed within a minute.
Free multipliers
- Partner channels: on Robinhood x Lighter, trades placed via Robinhood Wallet count double (2x, versus 1x on the Lighter app).
- Referral codes: depending on the platform, a points bonus or a fee discount for the referee. Check what the code really gives you: on Entropy, for example, a referrer's code at tier 1 doesn't reduce your fees (see our Entropy guide).
- Protocol vaults: a passive yield, sometimes extra points, alongside your trading.
Multi-farming: one action, several programs
Some actions count for several projects at once. The combinations farmers mention most:
- Entropy and Hyperliquid: a trade on Entropy goes through your Hyperliquid account and adds to your Hyperliquid volume (see our Entropy guide).
- Hyperliquid, Lighter and Arcus: your perps volume history on these platforms counts toward your rank on the waitlist for Arcus perps, the dYdX team's project.
- Arcus and Robinhood Chain: Arcus runs on Robinhood Chain. Trading there also means being active on that chain.
- Robinhood x Lighter: every trade counts for the LIT pool, twice as much via Robinhood Wallet.
The most efficient approach is to put the two legs of a delta-neutral on two of these combinations: for example a long on Entropy and the matching short on Robinhood x Lighter, when the same asset exists on both sides.
Whether an activity also counts for a neighboring project is rarely confirmed officially. It's one more bet, not a guarantee.
How to work out a program's scoring
- Read the program's official documentation, even when it stays vague: the criteria it mentions are rarely there by chance.
- Record your points and activity every week (volume, fees, average open interest, number of active days) in a spreadsheet.
- Change only one variable at a time from one week to the next: more maker, a different pair, positions held longer.
- Compare your points per dollar of fees paid: that's the metric that tells you whether a method is worth its cost.
- Beware of rumors: only official announcements count. Tread says so explicitly in its documentation.
What gets your points removed
Multi-accounts, wallets funded from the same source, round trips between your own accounts, entries and exits that are too fast: these behaviors are detected and penalized after the fact. Our guide Sybil: why multi-accounts get excluded details how projects detect them.