EigenLayer is the word on every airdrop farmer's lips these days. It is a restaking protocol that has raised $50m and has $6b total value locked (TVL) according to DefiLlame.
Being a tokenless protocol and having a points system, there's bound to be an airdrop and many believe it's gonna be a big one.
Instead of staking directly on the platform, I've discovered it's best done through other protocols because by doing so, you will then take part in two airdrops - the EL one and the protocols you are staking your ETH on.
In this article, I'm gonna share some of my ETH staking strategies as well as plans considering Dymension(DYM). I know, the Ethereum mainnet can be a painful experience because of the fees but bear with me, the first one is somewhat passive and the second one is only shocking when bridging out of Ethereum.
Ether.fi
This is a super simple platform to use. Once you have $ETH in your wallet, navigate to Etherfis top menu and click eETH and stake your ETH to eETH. That's it, now you start accumulating daily etherfi and EgenLayer points.
The dreaded Ethereum fees weren't that much, probably $3-4 but it all depends on the time when you are staking and could fluctuate quite a bit.
There are also many gamification options to increase your points stack such as being an active member on Discord, inviting friends and logging on the platform daily.
The cool thing here is that you can take your points accumulation even further by taking part in some of the defi opportunities.
When you staked your ETH you received eETH in your wallet and this can be used in staking and pooling on other platforms. For example, you can take to to Pendle and stake it there to receive extra APR on your stake as well as 2x points.
Just recently it was also announced that it's now possible to bridge your eETH to Arbitrum for 3x points. This is done by wrapping your eETH to weETH and then bridging to Pendle.
As for me, I'm still contemplating my options here as wrapping and bridging obviously cost extra ETH and during this weekend the fees have been very high. This certainly isn't Cosmos or Solana where you can go into full degen mode and just have fun.
Key Takeaways:
- I wouldn't recommend staking directly on EigenLayer as you will then miss the Etherfi airdrop.
- Mind the ETH fees
- Long play - there's gonna be some bonus points for those who hold eETH until the end of March.
Mode
Since most of us are on a limited budget, I think it's important that we double, or even multiply, our chances for airdrops with a certain amount staked or bridged to a chain.
Just like Etherfi, Mode offers a chance to farm (at least) one other possible airdrop. The difference between these two is that Mode is a blockchain itself with a points system and protocols already built on it.
At least one protocol on Mode blockchain has announced their points system to reward users interacting with their dapp. Ionic is a lending/borrowing platform and by interacting with it, you also gather Mode airdrop points in addition to Ionic points.
That's not all though.
There are also Mode quests on this platform called Intract where you can earn extra rewards such as USDT and NFTs by interacting on Mode.
Oh... those fees!
Yes, it was a bit expensive to bridge from the Ethereum Mainnet to Mode and I actually spent the last couple of days monitoring those as they went from $17 to up to $37. I eventually ended up paying $20.55. Sick.
So, once my ETH was on Mode the swapping fees became something I can live with. For example, I used Kim Exchange to swap some ETH to USDT and paid $0.55 in fees. For an active Solana user that may sound like an outrage but I guess it could be even more if I was still on the ETH main.
I'm just starting to explore Mode and have a good feeling about being in at so early stage. By following those Intract quests, I automatically get involved with apps on Mode and perhaps even manage to farm airdrops that we yet know nothing about.
DYM
The one thing that got me out of my comfort zone and led me to explore the dreaded Ethereum was the Dymension airdrop. In other words, I got more chips to play the game.
In my previous blog post, Three Celestia Farming Strategies, I was still waiting for the airdrop to happen and now it has and here are the results:
- Claimed 212 DYM tokens
- Price was ~$4.80 at launch
- Price now: $7.56
- Staked 102 - worth $772 at the moment
- Sold rest and got $500
To me, this was a really big airdrop. I was eligible for it because I had staked 10 TIA tokens on Kepler before the snapshot was taken. Incredibly, even one TIA would have apparently been enough!
This just shows that some airdrop strategies can be really beneficial. The price of TIA was somewhere near $10 and I bought it for $100 and it's now worth twice as much as TIA has surged to ~$20. More than that, I kinda 10Xed it as I got more than $1000 worth of DYM on top of that.
The general feeling among the airdrop circles is that Dymension is going to be the "next Celestia" so based on my TIA experience, I'm definitely staking that. Also, I tend to stick with my original plan and whatever future airdrops come my way, I'm going to sell 50% and stake 50%.
You could say that I'm like a bee jumping from one flower to another. Some flowers just happen to grow on Ethereum.
Conclusion
The ETH fees suck but actually, I don't mind investing my airdrop gains into it. Ethereum is a solid blue chip so why not hold/stake some while farming future airdrops?
Other than that, I plan to reallocate my gains on chains such as Solana and Cosmos where the airdrop spirit seems to be strong at the moment.
This is not financial advice but I still believe investing in airdrop tokens is a pretty safe play if you are careful, do your research and most importantly, double-check every link, source and project. There are some very clever scams out there on X and elsewhere.
That being said, jumping into solid projects and staking the assets for airdrops is the thing of 2024. Check out my article, The Year Of Airdrops - How To Take Part, and follow my blog for airdrop strategies. This year I'm not only gonna focus on farming airdrops but also blog about them so stay tuned.
Thank you for reading!
Ongoing Airdrops:
🔸 DOP testnet
🔸 GRVT ZkSync Mystery Box - just log in and claim your first mystery box
🔸 Ether.fi - stake ETH for Points & EigenLayer points
🔸 Mode airdrop
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