Hey LPers! Hope your LP positions are printing fees! One thing that you’ll learn about LPing is that to LP well, you’ll need to have a wide understanding of DeFi protocols.

Because at the end of the day you are holding tokens that will go up or down 😬 based on the protocol fundamentals and the market.

So in this guide we’ll go through Swell Liquid staking. What the protocol is and how you could benefit from their $Swell token airdrop that is coming!

What is liquid staking?

You’ve most likely heard of liquid staking by this point. Lido, Rocket Pool, Coinbase Staked Eth and Swell. These are all liquid staking options.

Ethereum staking is the base yield of crypto since. It’s real yield coming from Ethereum validators securing the network and for their services they are given Eth ever since The Merge.

I’m actually an Ethereum Node operator via Rocket Pool. It’s been fun. 😅

But not every little, old joe wants to operate a node.

That’s where liquid staking comes in.

You give your Eth to one of the liquid staking platforms, Lido, Rocket Pool, (now Swell), they do the node staking portion for you, and then share some of the Ethereum staking yield with you via a token.

For Lido, the token is stETH, for Rocket Pool, reETH, and Swell, swETH.

These Tokens are based on Eth and automatically grow in value based on the Ethereum yield that is added to the underlying Eth assets.

“Liquid” hints that you can trade these tokens around; your Eth isn’t locked. All you have to do is hold the token and you are earning ethereum staking rewards!

With different staking protocols you can earn 3 - 6% APR on your Eth.

Liquid staking blowing up

Since the Ethereum merge liquid staking have blown up. 39% of Ether is now being staked.

80% of the liquid staking market share going to Lido.

There are over 100 protocols offering liquid staking.

As an LP knowing all of this and how it works will give you a benefit. A lot of liquid staking protocols have tokens and you might want to LP them!

How is Swell different?

Well I’d say it’s not that different 😅 except the fact that they have a token Airdrop coming. More on that in a sec.

It’s another Liquid staking protocol that works pretty similar to the others.

Currently Swell has $77 million staked on their protocol and they are the 12th biggest Eth staking protocol.

As of right now you can get 3.7% APR on your ETh.

Get the Airdrop?

Swell has confirmed that there will be an airdrop and they are giving out “Pearls” which is basically a point system to track how big your airdrop will be.

We don’t know how they will relate to the $swell token other than more Pearls = bigger airdrop.

So here’s how you can become eligible for it.

First use the Poolfish referral link here to get 10 Pearls for each Eth you stake. When you use it, The Fish will also get 10 Pearls, Thanks!

This will take you to the “Stake” page.

You’ll stake as much Eth as you’d like and get back swETH, Swells liquid Eth token!

Remember there is always smart contract risk when dealing with dapps like Swell so take part at your own risk!

You’ll have to stake at least some Eth to get any Pearls. The more Eth you stake and the longer you hold it, the more Pearls you’ll receive over time. You can withdraw your Eth at any time.

And remember, it’s liquid Eth so you could always trade it on exchange to get your Eth back as well. You could even do other DeFi things with it!

Get even more Pearls!

Other than staking Eth to get Pearls you can also get more Pearls by referring your friends!

Head to the Voyage page.

Click “Create Link” to copy your referral link.

When anyone uses this link you’ll both get 10 Pearls for each swETH that they stake.

So for example, if your buddy stakes 3 Eth and gets ~ 3 swETH in return, you’d both recieve 30 pearls.

You can see the Pearls you’ve gained so far here as well.

Another way you can recieve more Pearls is by providing liquidity for swETH. These pools are Eligible: Balancer, Aura, Uniswap v3, Maverick, Bunni and Pendle.

I’m not actually sure how much Pearls you receive from each. But I staked my swETH on Pendle and received 3 or 4.

Hope this guide was helpful to you in your DeFi journey! If you have any questions or feedback you can always reach out on the Contact Us or DM Noah on Twitter directly.

Keep swimming!