Now Live: Polkadot GIGAHydration
2M DOT Liquidity Incentives For 6 Months
Polkadot’s biggest liquidity campaign to date has just launched on Hydration. Following a successful OpenGov vote, 2M DOT from the Polkadot treasury is now starting to flow towards liquidity incentives on Hydration for the next 6 months.
This new campaign builds on the success of our previous incentive program that began 1 year ago while introducing new focus areas including stablecoin liquidity, Snowbridge assets, and GIGADOT incentives. Polkadot GIGAHydration also introduces BOOSTS - every 3 weeks, the governance of Hydration will decide which asset will get an additional APR boost.
Building upon Exceptional Results
The numbers speak for themselves. Our previous Polkadot Hydration Campaign set out to achieve $62.25 million in TVL using 1 million DOT over 12 months. Today, Hydration has reached $180.5 million in TVL—nearly tripling our original target and demonstrating the incredible potential when the Polkadot ecosystem unites behind a shared vision.
But the impact extends far beyond TVL metrics:
Trading volumes increased from $0.5-2M daily to $2-10M daily
Active accounts nearly doubled from under 1,000 to almost 2,000
XCM transfers surged from ~400 to ~1,000 daily messages
Ecosystem growth: GIGADOT's launch doubled Bifrost's TVL and unlocked critical integrations on AssetHub
External capital: Significant liquidity from EVM wallets bringing fresh capital into Polkadot
These results proved that strategic liquidity incentives can drive exponential growth across the entire ecosystem, not just individual protocols.
GIGA Incentives
GIGAHydration will distribute rewards to attract more liquidity across a wider basket of assets. Among the incentivised major caps are stablecoins, tBTC, ETH, and DOT (including GIGADOT). The expected APRs for these assets are in the range 10-20%+ - although they will start as high as 69% (nice). The focus for stablecoins is upon USDC (native and Snowbridge), USDT (native and Snowbridge), and HOLLAR (Hydration’s upcoming native stablecoin). There are also plans to incentivise a EUR stablecoin. ETH holders can receive rewards for supplying GIGAETH - a representation of ETH on Hydration which accrues additional yield by simply holding it, derived from the combined yield of wstETH and aETH (ETH on Hydration’s money market).
Besides that, Hydration will provide LP incentives towards a wide variety of mid caps including KSM, AAVE, SKY, LINK, LDO, ASTR, GLMR, TRAC, MYTH, PHA, BNC, and EWT. The expected APRs for these assets are 20-30%+.
All rewards will be distributed in GIGADOT which is a composite token that tracks the price of DOT while accruing yield from 4 sources: vDOT (Polkadot’s LSD), aDOT (DOT supplied to Hydration’s money market), trading fees, and additional incentives.
APR BOOSTS
In addition to the above, Polkadot GIGAHydration will feature APR BOOSTS for some of the tokens. Every 3 weeks, Hydration will launch governance votes that let the community decide which token should receive the additional boost, resulting in a temporary higher APR for that asset. Letting the liquidity flow to where it is most needed.
What This Means for You
The new GiGAHydration farms are now live. If you are already LPing on Hydration, make sure that you join these newly created farms: https://app.hydration.net/liquidity/all-pools
Happy farming, and don’t forget to follow Hydration OpenGov in the upcoming weeks and help decide which assets should get an additional APR BOOST! (Curve wars but hydrated?)