Open almost any new perp DEX and you will find a "Points" tab. Trade, hold a position, refer a friend, and a number goes up. Nobody tells you exactly what the number is worth. This lesson explains why the programs exist, how to think about their value, and why "trading for the airdrop" is a real cost that many people never add up.
Why new venues run points programs
A perp DEX lives or dies by liquidity and volume. A new venue starts with neither, and the honest way to get them — being better — takes years. Points are a shortcut: they promise that activity today will be rewarded with a share of a future token. Traders come for the promise, the volume attracts more traders, and the venue gets the numbers it needs to look established.
The model has a famous precedent. Hyperliquid ran a points campaign before distributing its token to early users in 2024, and that distribution is widely regarded as one of the largest and most generous in DeFi. Almost every perp venue launched since has borrowed the playbook, and newer names such as Aster, Lighter and Paradex have all been associated with points or pre-token campaigns at some stage. Whether any of them repeats the outcome is a different question.
What a point actually is
A point is an entry in the venue's database. It is not a token, it is not transferable, and it carries no legal claim on anything. The venue decides, usually in a document it can amend at any time, what counts, how much each activity earns, and whether points ever convert into a token at all. Terms commonly change mid-campaign — weightings shift, new "seasons" start, earlier points are diluted. You are trusting the team's future goodwill, not a contract.
What an airdrop is worth: the dilution math
Because points are not priced, most people guess. Here is how to guess more carefully — with illustrative numbers only.
Say a venue plans to give 10% of its token supply to points holders, and at launch the fully diluted valuation (FDV) is $1 billion. The points pool is then worth $100 million. If you hold 0.001% of all points, your share is $1,000.
Now the other side of the ledger. Suppose earning those points took three months of active trading: $400 in trading fees, $150 in funding, and a couple of positions that were stopped out for another $300 — losses you would not have taken without the incentive. That is $850 spent to earn an uncertain $1,000, before tax, before the token is listed, and before you find out whether it trades at that FDV for more than a day. Airdrop tokens often fall sharply in the first weeks as recipients sell, and some allocations vest over months.
The unknowns are the problem: you do not know the percentage of supply, the FDV, your share of total points, or whether there will be a token. Change any one of them and the answer swings from very good to a clear loss.
The risks of trading for the drop
- Overtrading. Points reward volume, so people trade more and larger than their plan allows. Fees and funding compound; the trades themselves are often bad ones.
- Venue risk. New venues are, by definition, less battle-tested. Smart-contract risk (Lesson 37), thin liquidity, and untested liquidation engines are all higher on a six-month-old venue.
- Sybil and wash-trading filters. Venues explicitly exclude accounts they judge to be farming — many wallets controlled by one person, or self-matching trades. The rules are usually published after the fact.
- Tax. In many jurisdictions an airdrop is income when received, at its value on that day, even if it later falls (Lesson 45).
- Scam surface. "Claim your airdrop" is the single most common phishing lure in crypto. Real claims are announced on the venue's official channels and never require your seed phrase (Lesson 34).
A sober way to participate
Points are not bad; the mistake is letting them make your trading decisions. A reasonable approach:
- Trade the venue only if you would use it with no points at all — for its liquidity, fees or product. Check its profile on the ranking first.
- Keep your position sizing and risk limits exactly as they were (previous lesson). Points should not change a single number.
- Treat any eventual airdrop as a bonus with an expected value near zero until it is in your wallet and sold.
- Use a separate wallet with limited funds on new venues, and keep the record of fees paid — you will want it at tax time either way.
If a campaign is the only reason to be on a venue, that is the campaign telling you something about the venue.
- Trading bigger or more often than your plan allows because points reward volume.
- Valuing points at a guessed dollar figure and treating that as money already earned.
- Clicking a 'claim your airdrop' link that arrived by DM or email instead of going through the venue's official site.
Written and reviewed by the dexwatch editorial team. Last updated 2026-09-22. Educational content, not financial advice. Spotted an error? Tell us.