🔍Three airdrops to farm in Q4

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Nov 12, 2026

GM friends.

Here’s what I’ll cover today:

🔍 Three airdrops to farm in Q4

📊 Crypto chart of the week

🗞️ The latest DeFi news

🔍 Three airdrops to farm in Q4

Airdrop farming is clearly no longer as rewarding as it was a few years ago.

But every few months, we still see a few exceptional airdrops.

Lighter and Re are two examples from the past 12 months where points holders received airdrop allocations that far exceeded most people’s expectations.

That’s why selective airdrop farming still makes sense to me. Instead of chasing every points program, I farm a few projects with genuinely interesting, innovative products.

In this issue, I’ll cover three such airdrop opportunities I’m bullish on.

1. Metric

Metric is one of the fastest-growing new DEXs.

It went live publicly on October 15 and has already become the fifth-largest DEX by daily trading volume, despite not having launched a points program yet.

The main reason behind its growth is that it is incredibly capital efficient.

This is because, unlike other AMMs like Uniswap, Metric prices every asset against a live external reference price from an oracle feed. This approach significantly reduces impermanent loss, particularly for tokenized stock pools.

In other words, it’s not just another fork. It’s a DEX that brings something truly new to the AMM sector, and that’s the main reason why I am bullish on Metric.

Metric can be farmed by providing liquidity to its pools.

Each pool has a curator who selects the oracle feed used for asset pricing. You’ll also notice a small colored dot next to each pool, which indicates its risk tier.

I’ve circled it in the screenshot below.

As a general rule, I’d prioritize providing liquidity only to pools with a green dot, as these are generally the lower-risk options for LPs. You can hover over the green or yellow dot to see more details about each pool.

Before depositing, I’d also check which oracle the pool uses and how it has performed historically. You can find this information on the pool’s analytics page.

One more thing: only provide liquidity to pools containing assets you’re bullish on. Your returns also depend on the performance of those assets, so choosing a pool purely because it offers attractive incentives isn’t necessarily a good idea.

If you decide to try it, I’d suggest starting with a small amount of liquidity to familiarize yourself with how it works and see how it goes.

2. Mezzanine

Mezzanine is a DeFi tranching protocol founded by Stephen (@phtevenstrong on X).

It is the first DeFi platform that is building structured tranching vaults around complex yield strategies like looping.

If you don’t know Stephen, he’s been covering yield strategies on CT for years.

I’ve followed Stephen for years, and I like that Mezzanine is building something unique, which is why I’m farming it. Plus, I am earning a good yield by using the platform while also accumulating airdrop points.

Currently, there’s only one strategy live: Hastra Optimizer.

This strategy loops PRIME and AUTO, two yield-bearing assets, to earn yield. PRIME and AUTO are backed by real-world auto and home equity loans. PRIME is one of the largest RWA assets on Solana and has been live for 11 months without losses, though past performance does not guarantee future results.

There are two ways to farm Mezzanine points via the Hastra Optimizer strategy:

Deposit into the Hastra Optimizer senior vault. Since launch, this vault has generated between 7.8% and 16% APY. It also has a loss buffer: if the strategy incurs losses, the junior tranche absorbs them first.
Deposit into the Hastra Optimizer junior vault. This vault has generated between 18% and 32% APY since launch. The trade-off is that junior depositors absorb strategy losses first, which makes this vault the riskier option.

I personally deposited into the senior vault because I prefer its lower-risk profile. It has generated over 10% APY on average so far, which I find quite attractive, especially since I’m accumulating Mezzanine points at the same time.

3. Variational

Variational doesn’t need an introduction.

I first covered it around September–October last year, but even I didn’t expect it to grow so quickly and become the third-largest perps DEX.

With so many people using it today, earning Variational points is now significantly harder than it was a few months or a year ago.

But farming Variational still makes sense to me, since its team recently announced a large 32% token supply airdrop at TGE. On top of that, Polymarket currently implies a valuation of over $1 billion for the Variational token, which means its total airdrop could be worth over $320 million.

Two strategies I like for farming it:

For active traders, just trade on Variational organically
Use a delta-neutral strategy like funding rate arbitrage across Variational and Hyperliquid in order to generate trading volume

Variational TGE is confirmed for 2026, so there’s not much time left to farm this one.

That’s it for today.

I believe all these projects have the potential to do a good airdrop.

They've all innovated in some meaningful ways and have something that sets them apart. This doesn’t guarantee a big airdrop, but it improves their chances of success.

I’ll keep sharing airdrop opportunities I find interesting if there’s interest.