Airdrops and Swidge Limit Updates

These changes are designed to enhance the user experience (UX) of airdrops and Swidge, ensuring that airdrops distribute tokens where they can be used most easily, while balancing liquidity against transaction costs and preventing dust allocations that generate friction. We learned from the Ethena Season 2 airdrop that optimising for transaction costs alone is not optimal and that ensuring tokens land on a chain with sufficient liquidity is also critical to good airdrop UX.

Lessons from Ethena Season 2

Ethena’s Season 2 airdrop brought to light the importance of chain selection. For Season 2 we distributed ENA tokens on Arbitrum to lower transaction fees, but due to low liquidity users were forced to bridge or send tokens out of their Infinex account. Even after enabling OFT tokens via Stargate, ENA holders needed to bridge to Mainnet and deal with $100 swap minimums.  This experience made it clear that lower fees alone do not guarantee usability, liquidity must be equally prioritized.

Ethena Season 3

Before the Season 3 airdrop, we reduced the minimum transaction values for Swidge. On Ethereum Mainnet, we have reduced this from $100 to $5. For rollups and other lower-cost chains, the threshold is now $0.10, allowing users to decide whether such small swaps are worth it without blocking them entirely.

There are over 13,000 accounts that qualified for Season 3. With the new reduced limits, any address with over $10 in sENA will receive it on Ethereum mainnet. The ~8,000 eligible accounts that would have received under $10 in sENA will instead be airdropped USDe on Arbitrum. A $10 cutoff was chosen to provide a buffer for price volatility and to ensure users will be able to swidge.

Since most recipients already hold USDe, they will be able to immediately swap or bridge with no extra steps. While there is no minimum for this airdrop, in the future, a 10c airdrop threshold will be in place, or network fees will be deducted from the airdrop, depending on the selected asset and network.

Core Airdrop Principles Going Forward

We will airdrop tokens on the chain that offers the deepest liquidity at the lowest cost, regardless of where rewards were earned. Swap thresholds will be transparent—$5 on mainnet and $0.10 on rollups—so users see fees in their quotes. Additionally for future airdrops allocations under $0.10 will be withheld to avoid dust, griefing, and stranded balances.

This framework will inform future Infinex airdrops, ensuring when tokens hit wallets, they can be used immediately.