How to use Hydroponic Farms on Liquidswap: New yield farming pools on Aptos

We have lots of Aptos yield farms on Liquidswap, with APRs reaching 100% and more. Deposit liquidity in APT-doodoo, stAPT-USDc, and other pools; stake your LPs and Pontem NFTs; and earn a passive income from farming. Read on for a step-by-step tutorial.

The best farms - only on Liquidswap

We’ve been quietly adding new farming pools to Liquidswap, and as of February 2024 we have eight of them:

• APT-doodoo;
• Amnis Finance pools: APT-stAPT (2 pools with different reward allocations), USDC-stAPT (also 2 pools), amAPT-APT;
• APT-WETH
• APT-MBX

Note that our farms use LayerZero USDC and WETH. As you can see, maximum APR is over 300%, so don’t lose any time and add liquidity before it comes down!

How to read the farming APR

We made sure that Hydroponic Farms have a competitive APR compared to other yield farming programs on Aptos. Look at that reward rate in the APT-doodoo pool!

Keep in mind that the reward rate changes all the time. It depends on how many LPs are deposited in the farm. The total amount of weekly rewards allocated for a farm is fixed, so if you divide it by more people (LPs), you get less.

If you enter a farm early, you’ll enjoy a higher APR for a while, but it will go down as more people join. It’s normal for the initial APR to be around 100-200% and eventually go down to 10% and lower. Therefore, early participants get an advantage.

Example: the weekly reward rate in the APT-doodoo pool is $700, and there is $9000 in LPs already staked in the farm. You deposit another $1000, so that now you have 10% of the farm. You are entitled to 10% of the rewards, or $70 per week. This translates into ($70/7)*365=$3650 a year, or 265% APY.

Now let’s imagine that a few days after you deposit LPs, another person adds $1000 in LPs to the farm. Now the TVL is $11000, so your $1000 is roughly 9.1% of the farm. You’ll earn 9.09% of the same weekly reward. That’s $63.7 a week, or 232% APR.

Remember: with every new LP added to the farm,  the APR goes down a little bit. The reward rate you see on the page is the annualized reward based on current data.

How many LPs you’ll get also depends on the pool. In some pools, $100 in liquidity can give you 0.1 LP, while in others just 0.01. The way the value of 1 LP is calculated is complex and stems from the initial amount of liquidity at pool creation and other factors.

Will I still earn liquidity provider rewards?

Of course! You’ll be earning an APR as a liquidity provider, plus farming rewards. For the current APR in liquidity pools, check the Pools page.

NFT boosts

The WETH-APT farm provides a reward boost for the holders of Pontem Space Pirates. In order to get a boost, you’ll need to stake a Pontem NFT in the farm together with LPs. Technically speaking, this boosts the size of your LP stake itself, rather than the reward rate. For example, if you deposit 1 LP and a Pontem Space Pirate/Dark Ages, the contract will calculate rewards as if you had 1.5 LP. You can add an NFT at the same time when you add LPs to the farm or later.

If you don’t have a Pontem NFT yet, check them out on Topaz:

• Space Pirates

Liquidswap also enables projects to create farms boosted by other NFT collections of their choice. As of February 2024, there is one such farm: MBX-APT, with boosts for the holders of MBX Marblership NFTs.

Hydroponic Farms vs. APT staking: understand the difference

Liquidswap now offers both yield farming and native delegated APT staking. You’ll find both in the Earn section, but they are completely different products.

1. Farms require that you first add liquidity to a swapping pool, such as APT-doodoo. In return, you’ll get LP tokens, which you can deposit in the corresponding Hydroponic Farm. The farms are offered by Pontem in partnership with project teams.

Rewards will start to accumulate immediately, and you can claim them any time, as long as the accumulated amount is more than 0.01 APT. The LPs will be locked in the farm for 7 days - after that, you can withdraw them at any moment. Next, you can remove liquidity from the pool if you wish.

Farming rewards are calculated per 1 LP per week. The APR depends on how many LPs have already been deposited and can differ greatly from farm to farm. Rewards are normally paid in APT, but can also be paid in one of the tokens participating in the farm. You’ll get a reward boost if you also stake a Pontem NFT (Space Pirate or Dark Ages, depending on the farm);

2) Delegated APT staking requires that you pick one of the active validators in Earn -> Staking and stake your APT on them. In return, you’ll get a share of the validator’s rewards. You don’t need to add liquidity to a pool, and there are no LP tokens.

Staked APT will be locked for a period of up to 30 days, depending on where in the staking cycle you deposit the tokens. The expected APR is 7%. All rewards are paid in APT. To claim the rewards, you’ll need to wait for the next unlock and withdraw some or all of APT from staking.

Native delegated staking is enabled by the Aptos team, which also whitelists the validators who can be staked on. Pontem can’t influence the list of available validators, or the APR.

If you have APT staked on a validator but would prefer to use it for farming instead, make sure to set the coins for withdrawal before the nearest unlock date. If you miss this date, you’ll have to wait another month.

Once APT appears in the Unlocking tab, it will become available for withdrawal on the day of the unlock. You’ll be able to claim it manually and put it in the new Hydroponic farms for a higher APR.

Can a project on Aptos launch its own yield farm on Liquidswap?

This is a question that Pontem often gets from projects in the Aptos ecosystem. The answer is yes - but there are a few rules to follow:

1. A token needs to be whitelisted on Liquidswap first. This requires submitting an audit report and a public (doxxed) team, among other things. To start the process, click the List Your Token icon in the bottom right corner of the Liquidswap interface to go to the listing questionnaire. Our Marketing & Partnership Lead will contact you.
2. A yield farm requires a smart contract, and it’s up to the project launching the farm to develop that contract. Pontem’s devs can provide some guidance, but you’ll need to do the coding.
3. The project will also need to take care of the rewards, which can be paid in any token issued on Aptos (including the project’s own token, of course).

Step 1: Select a pool

‍Every Hydroponic Farm corresponds to a liquidity pool with two tokens: APT-doodoo, APT-USDC, etc. You’ll need to add liquidity to one of them before you can farm rewards. We’ll use APT-doodoo as an example, as it has the highest APR and also because doodoo is great!

1. Add liquidity. Click on this button to go directly to the pool’s page where you can add funds to a swapping pool to get LP tokens.

Step 2: Make sure you have enough APT and doodoo - or buy some

You need to be a liquidity provider to start farming, so we’ll begin by depositing tokens in a pool. You’ll need to add equivalent amounts of both assets:  10 APT and 10 APT’s worth of doodoo, for example.

1. Connect your Aptos wallet to Liquidswap. We recommend Pontem Wallet.
2. If you don’t have enough APT,  you have two options: 1) buy some on a CEX like Binance or KuCoin and withdraw it to Pontem Wallet; 2) bridge USDT, USDC, or WETH from Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum etc. using LayerZero, then buy APT. See the bridging guide and the FAQ for details.

With that APT, you can buy doodoo. You don’t even have to visit the Liquidswap website, because Pontem Wallet has seamless built-in swaps. Simply click on Swap on the wallet homescreen, enter an amount to swap, check the fee, and confirm by clicking Swap again.

If one of the tokens isn’t registered in the wallet yet, you’ll need to register it first (and pay a small gas fee). You can also add tokens directly in Pontem Wallet by clicking Import Tokens.

Step 3: Add liquidity to a pool to get LP tokens

Back on the Hydroponic Farms page, locate the pool on the list, and click the “+” icon (Add Liquidity). Note the current pool APR (1.68%): this refers to liquidity provider rewards and not to farming rewards.

APR stands for ‘annualized percentage rate’: the amount you’d earn in a year if the yield rate remained the same.

The APR calculation on Liquidswap is based on the pool’s trading fee revenue for the past 7 days. It changes all the time.

When you join a farm on Liquidswap, you’ll earn both a trading fee APR as a liquidity provider and the farming APR.

You can also add liquidity through the Pools section on Liquidswap. Or, if you are already a liquidity provider and that same pool is on the list of active farms, you can stake the LPs directly in the farm.

Enter an amount in APT to see how much doodoo you’ll need to deposit, or vice versa. Make sure to leave enough APT for gas fees, both for this and future transactions!

Click Add Liquidity and confirm the transaction in the wallet. In this example, we should receive 4,495.88 LP for roughly $200 worth of liquidity.

Click Confirm and sign the transaction in Pontem Wallet.

Note how low gas fees are on Aptos, especially after the recent gas optimization: 0.0007 APT, or $0.01! On Uniswap, it would cost you over $15 in fees to supply liquidity.

The LP tokens are proof that you own a share of the pool and are entitled to a share of the swapping fees that it earns. If you decide to withdraw the liquidity, you’ll need to  burn the LPs (after withdrawing them from the farm).

The LP tokens should now appear in your Pontem Wallet. They are displayed as APT-doodoo (or APT-stAPT etc., depending on the pool).

That’s it - you’ve just supplied liquidity to the APT-USDC pool! It’s time to start farming.

Step 4: Stake LPs in the farm

Back on the farming page, you’ll see that the “+” icon has changed to a farming icon (If it hasn’t,, refresh the page). Click on the icon and enter the maximum available amount of LPs down to the first two decimals. For example, if you have 4,518,466 LPs, enter 4,518,46.

The Stake button will become active. Click on it and confirm the transaction in Pontem Wallet.

My Farms tab should open and display your farming position.

There is a 7-day lock period for each farm; that’s why the Withdraw button is initially grayed out. During the lock period, you can collect the rewards but not withdraw the LPs. After 7 days, you’ll be able to claim the liquidity from the farm.

The Claim button will remain inactive until you’ve accumulated at least 0.01 APT in rewards.

You can always add more liquidity to the pool and increase your farming position by clicking on Stake LP; however, this will reset the weekly locking period. For example, if your original unlock is on March 1 and you stake some more LPs on March 4, the new unlock date will be March 8.

If the farm closes before your unlock date, your LPs will automatically become available for claiming.

Step 5: Getting an NFT boost

In those farms that allow NFT boosts, note that the contract boosts your stake rather than the reward rate (APY). So if you stake 1 LP, for example, and the boost is 50%, the reward will be calculated based on 1.5 LP. The result is the same as boosting the APY, or course; it’s only a question of coding efficiency.

You can boost only one farm with a single NFT. If you want to boost two farms, you’ll need two NFTs.

Go to My Farms and click on the Stake NFT button.  There’s also a handy Discover button that will take you directly to the relevant collection page on Topaz.

Click on the Stake NFT button -> Add NFT -> select an NFT in your wallet using the small blue circle in the top right of the NFT image -> Choose NFT -> Boost -> Confirm in the wallet.

Once the transaction is processed, you’ll see ‘Boosted with” + the NFT name in My Farms. The button will change to Unstake NFT.

To remove the boost and get your NFT back, click on Unstake NFT, then confirm in the wallet. The NFT will soon reappear in the wallet’s Collectibles tab. Your reward APR will go back to the unboosted level, though.

Step 6: Collecting rewards and withdrawing LPs

Collect farming rewards

You can claim the rewards anytime, including during the initial 7-day locking period. The minimum claimable amount is 0.01 APT. Simply click Claim and confirm the transaction in the wallet.

Even after the farm expires, you’ll still be able to claim any remaining rewards.

Withdraw LP tokens

During the initial 7-day lock period, the Withdraw button will remain inactive. Once the lock is over, you’ll be able to click on Withdraw and enter the amount of LP tokens that you want to redeem. If you have an active NFT boost and you want to withdraw everything, don’t forget to check the Unstake NFT box.

Important: rewards are NOT automatically claimed when youI withdraw LPs. You’ll have to collect the rewards manually, and the amount has to be higher than 0.01 APT.

Now it’s time to try Hydroponic Farms for yourself! We would be very grateful for your feedback on Telegram, so that we can make the next generation of Liquidswap farms even better.

Subscribe to our Technical Updates channel on Telegram to be the first to learn about new features in Liquidswap and Pontem Wallet. And of course, follow Pontem on Twitter and Discord: the team is always ready to answer your questions.

About Pontem

Pontem is a blockchain product studio building for Aptos and the broader Move ecosystem. We work closely with the Aptos team to produce truly innovative and secure dApps and dev tools, including the Liquidswap DEX, Pontem Wallet, Lumio L2, and PontemAI.