Well, you can’t say we didn’t warn you!

A few months back, when the Sonic chain launched, we coupled the launch with our complete guide to Sonic. Then, shortly after that, we gave you a guide to the budding DeFAI ecosystem on Sonic. Even in our weekly newsletter, we told you in multiple different editions to keep your eyes on Sonic.

Fast-forward to today. Despite the broader market going down the drain, along with my dreams of retiring on a private island with a 150-foot yacht, Sonic has been BOOMING.

I mean, if you look at it logically, it makes sense:

• The team is experienced and prioritizes quality projects over quantity
• The FeeM redistribution program incentivizes devs to build useful applications to create revenue for themselves
• Solana has recently had a major wave of extractive rugging activities, driving people away from the chain
• The user experience is world-class. Hot take, but I think it’s better than Solana’s

Since launch, Sonic has been what the cool kids refer to as ‘a slow cooker.’ It had a little bit of initial traction at launch that ultimately faded, but gradually, the products kept launching, people slowly started paying attention, and the community started to grow.

Now, things have truly kicked off.

Despite things being so hot, the numbers suggest that Sonic still has a long way to go when compared to other layer-1 [L1] chains. So, with that in mind, let’s get into the topic of today’s discussion. The Sonic Points Program.

I know most of you reading this are already using Sonic, but this article should give you some extra alfa to show you how to truly juice up your points and make the most of this massive airdrop.

All about the Sonic Points Program

Here’s the overview. To earn maximum points, users must hold whitelisted assets and deploy them on whitelisted apps. The points program will last multiple seasons and be distributed through NFT positions to avoid sudden supply shifts.

Total allocation towards points program

~200,000,000 S tokens

Duration

Season 1 started when the chain launched and will end in June 2025. The second season will start after that.

Earning points

There are three different ways to earn points:

1. Passive points - Users can earn passive points by simply holding whitelisted assets in their hot wallets (MetaMask, Rabby) or hardware wallets. Holding assets on exchanges will not be applicable. Furthermore, different assets have different boosts.
2. Activity points - To receive 2x the points you would receive through passive points, you must deploy the different whitelisted assets as liquidity on the participating apps that are eligible for the points program.  
3. App points - This is the Sonic Gems program, where a portion of the airdrop has been allocated to developers. Developers receive Gems based on their apps’ usage, activity, and innovativeness. These Gems can then be distributed by apps to their users as incentives (later redeemable for S) by these apps running their own points program.
   1. Season 1 is already underway, with a total allocation of 1,680,000 Gems.
   2. 262,500 Gems have already been distributed to the 30 different winners of the ‘Sonic Boom’ campaign

Distribution

The distribution of the airdropped tokens works through a vesting and burning mechanism.

As season 1 of the airdrop campaign concludes in June 2025, users will be able to claim their airdrop from the claim portal. However, only 25% of the airdrop will be liquid and available in S tokens. The remaining 75% will be locked and subject to a 270-day vesting period.

Those who wish to claim their tokens earlier can do so but will incur a penalty in the form of tokens being burnt. There’s a linear decay in the burn rate. So, the earlier you claim your vested portion, the higher your burn rate.

Suppose you get 100 S tokens as the total season 1 airdrop. From that, 25 tokens will be instantly available and liquid, while the 75 remaining will be vested. Say you wait 90 days and lose patience. You can claim 25 more S tokens but will have to burn 50 tokens to get it (66% of locked allocation).

However, if you wait the entire 270 days, you get all the tokens with nothing from your stash burned.

S token points farming strategies

Alright, the boring bit’s out of the way. You now know how the airdrop works. So, let’s dive into some different potential strategies that may finally get you out of the trenches and into that 150-foot yacht that we all desire so much.

Vanilla strategy

Let’s start off with a simple one. For those of you who actually have a life or simply have a sizeable amount of S that you wish to passively earn off of, you can deploy this basic strategy.

Take a good portion of your S tokens, go to Beets Protocol, and stake it for stS. The liquid staking token stS can then be used to provide liquidity on DEXes with different tokens, be it stablecoins or more volatile ones. You make the decision based on your risk tolerance.

By doing this, you will earn the 4.96% APR from staking, the APR from whichever pool you choose to provide liquidity in, and you will receive both passive and active points.

With the remaining bit of your S, you can go to Shadow Exchange and get involved in some good ol’ shitcoining. Trade a couple of coins, whether meme or anything else; maybe you make some profit, maybe you don't, but you will rack up a bunch of activity points.

Aggressive vanilla

If the above doesn’t tickle your degenerate fancy, you can step it up a notch and be a little more aggressive.

Use stablecoins to buy S tokens on Shadow to get some activity points. Stake a portion of your S for stS and then use your holdings to provide liquidity to the S/stS pool on Shadow. Use a very aggressive range to get the highest possible yield. While risky, there is a good chance that the S/stS peg volatility won’t be too high.

With this, you earn up to 16x boosted points on top of 30% APR from the pool and 4.96% APR from the staking rewards. If you wanna stay delta neutral, you can hedge your S spot position with a 1x short on S on HyperliquidX.

Looping

Looping is a great strategy for maximizing airdrop points, and the active DeFi degens know it all too well.

For those who don’t know, looping takes many forms, but in general, it works like this:

Suppose there is a pool offering high yield, and a user decides to add liquidity to that pool. Then, the person can either use the rewards from the LP position or borrow against the LP position to obtain more of the tokens and keep adding more to the pool to supercharge yield.

The repetition of this process multiple times is why it’s called looping.

With Sonic, this strategy can be used all over.

Over here, Sonic users can leverage platforms like Silo Finance or Euler Finance to execute their looping strategies. The most effective thing would be to use LSTs like stS and wOS.

These can be paired with S to provide liquidity and then looped through the aforementioned platform to supercharge yield and massively increase the boost received on points.

In addition, users can also use assets like scUSD, which is 6x boosted, for looping. Whether it’s pairing scUSD with S or any other LST, there are some high APR liquidity pools out there that users can loop to turbocharge their yield and Sonic points.

This is likely to be the most effective strategy as it broadens the number of DeFi protocols that can be interacted with.  

High-leverage looping

This is for the degens.

A cool strategy would be to take your S tokens and deposit them on Silo to get wOS. This wOS can then be used to borrow more S with high leverage. Whether it’s 5x, 6x, or 10x leverage, that’s up to you.

You can now use the borrowed funds in two ways:

Option 1: Keep repeating the process. So you borrow S with your wOS to then buy more wOS to then borrow more S and then keep looping.

This will yield a pretty high APR and also give you close to a 14x boost on just the Silo airdrop through the Sonic Gems program.

Option 2: Use the borrowed funds to put them into pools like wOS/S or scUSD/USDC. All of these are well-boosted whitelisted assets, and can also be looped until the maximum collateral limits are hit. The APR will be really high, but you can boost your Sonic airdrop by close to 60x.

Granted, the rewards are high, but the risk of liquidation is very real.  

Stablecoin farming

I imagine all of you reading this are not turbo degens and would like something a bit more simple.  

A good way to earn yield, stack up points, and maintain a delta-neutral position is through stablecoin farming on Sonic. This is a very popular strategy during choppy markets as it is, but it is also surprisingly effective to earn points.

Assets like scUSD and USDC are amongst the most heavily boosted assets in the Sonic Points program. All you have to do is provide liquidity in the scUSD/USDC pair and then use Silo Finance to conservatively loop your position.

You will earn a modest stable yield, but the points you receive will be heavily boosted, not to mention the additional boost you will receive from protocols like Silo and Shadow that received the Gems allocation.  

In addition, you don’t have to worry about things like impermanent loss, which significantly reduces the risk factor of this trade. As a semi-set-and-forget strategy, this is golden.

NOTE: AS YOU EARN THE POINTS, TRACK YOUR PROGRESS USING THE SONIC AIRDROP DASHBOARD.

Concluding thoughts

Look, we’ve reminded you enough times just how good Sonic is and how good it is going to be in the future.

This airdrop campaign is just one really effective way for you to profit from the growth of this chain. As always, it is our duty to help you navigate the tumultuous waters of the crypto industry.

Remember, it’s still early days for the chain. With the FeeM program, more developers will come, which will bring in more users. So our suggestion would be to get stuck in with the points farming before absolutely everything gets completely diluted.

Happy degening anon, stay safe.