Hotstuff Airdrop Guide: Farm Scarce Points on an Invite-Only Perp DEX
Hotstuff is an invite-only perp DEX on its own L1 with a hard-capped points program and only ~1,800 early users. How to farm the points, route the 5x boosted markets, and double-dip xStocks and Variational.
Hotstuff is sitting in the exact window airdrop hunters wait years for: invite-only, points live, no token yet, and only a few thousand people through the door. When the first snapshot went out on February 26, 2026, the entire eligible crowd was roughly 1,800 users. That is not a typo. Most points programs you hear about already have hundreds of thousands of farmers by the time they reach you. Hotstuff is still small enough that a consistent, deliberate trader can land meaningfully high on the board. Here is how the points actually work, where the multipliers hide, and how to stack a second and third points program on top of the same positions.
> Farm the volume the easy way. Hotstuff scores trading volume, and the lowest-stress way to keep it flowing is Hyperider , our perp-DEX volume game. You drive a car, ride Hotstuff's live ETH market, and every ride places tiny, capped, auto-closed trades that farm real volume with no liquidation fear. Small equity is welcome, and there is a free practice mode. Full walkthrough in the Hyperider guide .
is one margin account to trade, earn, and bank, aimed at retail users outside the United States. Under the hood it runs its own purpose-built Layer 1 secured by a consensus mechanism called DracoBFT, so it behaves as financial infrastructure rather than a single app on a shared chain. On top of that L1 sits a full exchange: perpetuals with up to 50x leverage, spot, an Invest tab with 200+ tokenized real-world assets, and vaults that pay APY on idle balances. You can go long or short on crypto (BTC, ETH, SOL, HYPE), US equities (Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Palantir, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google), commodities (gold, silver, crude oil, natural gas), FX pairs, and index products, all from one collateral pool. The breadth is the pitch: it is a place to express almost any macro view without leaving the app.
No token exists yet, so an airdrop is unconfirmed and speculative. The signals, though, are unusually clean. The points program launched on February 26, 2026, and Hotstuff retroactively distributed 1,400,000 points to over 1,800 early users based on that day's snapshot. Points are distributed every Monday at 12:00 UTC on the previous week's activity, the weekly allocation is capped at 1.5M points and scales with trading volume, and the program is scheduled to conclude no later than Q3 2026. A hard-capped, time-boxed points program with a defined end date, run on a project's own L1, is about as textbook a pre-token setup as it gets. It helps that Hotstuff is venture-backed, with Delphi Ventures, Dialectic and Stake Capital among its investors, real funding behind a project that has not yet issued a token. There is no token sale and no way to buy points; they can only be earned. Treat it as a strong but unconfirmed prospect and position while the crowd is small.
- Project: Hotstuff
- Chain: Hotstuff L1 (DracoBFT consensus)
- Type: Perp DEX plus spot, tokenized RWAs and vaults, invite-only alpha
- Status: Live points program, token unconfirmed
- Points launched: February 26, 2026 (1.4M retro to 1,800+ early users)
- Distribution: weekly, Mondays 12:00 UTC, capped at 1.5M points per week, ends by Q3 2026
- Point boosts: per-market multipliers up to 5x (RWAs and commodities in growth mode 5x, BTC and ETH 4x)
- Access: referral code required, non-US
- Referral: unlock your own invite link at $10,000 volume
- Builder pool: up to 2,000,000 points for teams building on it (separate from weekly user points; announced June 24, 2026)
- Backers: Delphi Ventures, Dialectic, Stake Capital and more
- Join:
Keep it organic. Self-trading and sybil behavior are explicitly excluded, the scoring formula is dynamic and opaque by design, and a hundred empty accounts earn nothing a single real one would not. This program rewards genuine volume and contribution, not wash loops.
Many of the equities you trade on Hotstuff, from Tesla to Apple to Nvidia, exist as xStocks: tokenized shares backed 1:1 by Backed Finance. xStocks runs its own separate points program, xPoints, that rewards you for holding, lending, or providing liquidity with those tokenized-equity assets, with an xBoost multiplier that climbs the longer you stay active and a referral that hands you 20% of your referees' points. If your thesis is "own tokenized equities," you can hold the actual xStocks tokens onchain to farm while trading the same names on Hotstuff for Hotstuff points. Two programs, one macro view. Be clear-eyed about the mechanics: xPoints measures onchain positions in your own wallet across supported DeFi, so it is a parallel play you set up deliberately, not something a Hotstuff trade triggers on its own. Both programs are non-US only.
If trading fees are your bottleneck, runs a zero-fee perpetuals model and is itself a live, tokenless airdrop prospect. Running part of your perp activity there is a clean way to spread exposure across two early perp DEXes at once: one on its own L1, one fee-free, both pre-token. It is the same nested-exposure logic that runs through this whole playbook, put your capital where more than one future distribution can find it.
The real cost is trading fees and funding, not a fixed entry price. Perp fees on Hotstuff are small per trade but add up with volume, and funding can run for or against you depending on the market and side. The minimum order size is roughly $10, so you can start tiny, but a realistic points farm wants enough capital to generate steady volume in the boosted markets without over-levering. Nothing is "locked" the way a staking program locks funds; your capital sits as margin and is at risk mainly through leverage and market moves. Budget for fees plus funding as your true cost, and keep leverage modest so a normal drawdown does not liquidate the position you are farming with.
The honest risks: it is alpha software on a brand-new L1, so bugs, downtime and rule changes are possible; leverage up to 50x makes liquidation real, so size down; the token is unconfirmed, so points may or may not convert; and access is geo-restricted to non-US users. On the other side, Hotstuff runs its own L1 rather than renting one, the points program is transparent about its weekly caps and end date, builder fee logic is verified onchain, and the RWA breadth and early-user base are real. Only use the official hotstuff.trade domain, never sign a blind approval, and never share a seed phrase. See how to avoid airdrop scams .
How do the points work?
You earn by organic trading via the app or API. Points are distributed every Monday at 12:00 UTC based on the previous week's activity, capped at 1.5M points weekly and scaled to volume, with per-market boosts up to 5x. The formula is dynamic and opaque by design.
Which markets earn the most points?
The tokenized RWAs and commodities running in growth mode carry the highest boosts, up to 5x, versus 4x on BTC and ETH. Trade a boosted market you have a genuine view on rather than chasing the multiplier blindly, and watch funding.
Can I buy points or farm with many accounts?
No. There was no sale and points cannot be bought. Self-trading and sybil behavior are excluded, and costless or duplicated actions do not earn in isolation, so many empty accounts give no advantage.
Is there a builder angle as well?
Yes, and it is the least crowded path. Hotstuff has set aside up to 2,000,000 points for teams building on it through builder codes and its API, which also earn a share of routed order fees. Full breakdown in our Hotstuff builder guide .
What are related airdrops?
(zero-fee perps), the Hotstuff builder guide , and how to farm perp DEX airdrops .
Related: Hotstuff builder guide , How to farm perp DEX airdrops , and the airdrops list .
Get in while the door is barely open, trade the boosted markets with a real view, and stack the xStocks and Variational angles on the same thesis. Small crowd, live points, own L1. This is the kind of early most people only recognise in hindsight.
Research, not financial advice. Web3 carries risk, do your own diligence.
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