Top Airdrop Hunts of October ($)
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- 🕑 CME to Launch 24/7 Trading for Crypto Futures and Options. CME Group will make cryptocurrency futures and options available for 24/7 trading beginning in early 2026, pending regulatory approval.
- 🌐 DoubleZero Premieres Mainnet Beta, Releases 2Z Token. DoubleZero has launched its mainnet beta, offering a high-performance alternative to the public internet for blockchains and beyond.
- 📈 Perp DEX Monthly Trading Volume Tops $1 Trillion as Aster Overtakes Hyperliquid. Perpetual DEXs crossed a major milestone in September, recording over $1T in monthly trading volume for the first time ever.
| Prices as of 4pm ET | 24hr | 7d |
|
Crypto $4.24T | ↗ 3.1% | ↗ 6.3% |
|
BTC $120,745 | ↗ 2.7% | ↗ 10.4% |
|
ETH $4,496 | ↗ 4.0% | ↗ 14.7% |
Market Plays:
- 🟠 Staking BTC on Starknet
- ✍️ Joining the Ethereal waitlist
- 📈 Playing Multiplier on Solana
- 💧 Trying Arbitrum’s DRIP Epoch 3
- 🪙 Trading tokenized gold via XAUt
Hot Reads:
- 🔵 Get Funded on Base - David Tso
- 🕵 HyperVault Rugged - Rekt
- 🏦 Morpho Vaults V2 - Morpho
- ✨ Spark Roadmap: The Next 6 Months - Spark
Farming Opps:
- 🟠 BTC: 41% APR with Ekubo’s WBTC-LBTC pool on Starknet
- 🟠 BTC: 15% APY Aerodrome’s tBTC-cbBTC pool on Base
- 🔵 ETH: 4% APR with Aerodrome’s weETH-WETH pool on Base
- 🔵 ETH: 5% APR with Vesu’s WETH vault on Starknet
- 🟢 USD: 17% APY with Exponent’s hyUSD PT on Solana
- 🟢 USD: 7% APY with Euler’s RLUSD vault on Ethereum
Airdrop Hunter:
- 🏦 OpenEden: Claim EDEN airdrop
- 🕯️ Lighter: Hunt Lighter airdrop
- 🟠 Ostium: Hunt Ostium airdrop
- 🔱 Avantis: Hunt AVNT airdrop
- 💱 Byreal: Hunt Byreal airdrop
- 📱 Dexari: Hunt Dexari airdrop
Bankless knows airdrops. Our analyst team is constantly tracking them, and each month, we send a list of crypto’s hottest airdrop opportunities directly to subscriber inboxes.
Currently, the crypto world finds itself gripped by perp DEX mania, a frenzied gold rush where shrewd hunters are rushing to farm decentralized perpetuals exchanges in hopes of becoming overnight millionaires from the next jaw-dropping airdrop distribution.
That’s exactly where the Bankless Airdrop Hunter comes in, our one-stop airdrop alpha hub with more than 170 curated opportunities that can help you navigate perp DEX mania with step-by-step instructions!
Today, we’re recommending 5 must-hunt perp DEX airdrops for the month of October 👇
🕯️ Lighter
Lighter is a decentralized trading platform that aims to provide unmatched security and scale. The exchange provides verifiable matching and liquidations using zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, while operating at traditional exchange performance levels.
Due to its Ethereum Layer 2 design, deposited assets and the canonical Lighter state root are stored on Ethereum, allowing users to enter/exit directly through the L1 and enjoy the benefits of the world’s leading settlement layer.
In the event of a Lighter sequencer failure, the system automatically triggers Escape Hatch mode. Users can then leverage Ethereum-posted data blobs to generate proofs of ownership and withdraw the full value of their assets directly to Ethereum, with no reliance on offchain coordination.
The first season of Lighter points concluded on September 30, but the team has promised further details on a second season in the coming days. While unconfirmed at this time, it is likely that Lighter will conduct an airdrop at a future date given the presence of this points program. Additionally, interim users between seasons one and two many qualify for retroactive points distributions.
🟠 Ostium
Ostium is an up-and-coming perpetuals platform on Arbitrum that offers highly leveraged trading markets for crypto assets, foreign exchange, commodities, and leading U.S. single stocks/stock indexes.
By leveraging the scalability and low transaction costs of Arbitrum, Ostium provides users with a robust trading experience, enabling them to engage in high-frequency trading without the typical constraints of network congestion and high fees associated with L1 transactions.
On March 31, 2025, Ostium introduced a points program that rewards users with weekly points distributions who receive "score units" from trading, referrals, and liquidity provisioning. While not explicitly stated, it is expected these points will convert into liquid tokens at a future date given the presence of a points program.
Retroactive points were distributed to all users who interacted with Ostium prior to the announcement of its points program.
🔱 Avantis
Avantis is a perpetual futures exchange backed by leading crypto venture firms that offers up to 500x leverage on crypto assets, foreign currencies, precious metals, and commodities to traders on the Base Base network.
While the Avantis exchange only accepts USDC for trading collateral, it offers an in-app money market via Morpho integration that enables depositors to borrow USDC margin against their crypto collateral.
Although Avantis already conducted an initial airdrop in early September, the protocol launched an even larger airdrop rewards program immediately afterwards that will distribute 4% of total AVNT supply to users who acquire XP before February 28, 2025.
📱 Dexari
Dexari is a trader-centric, mobile-first wallet on iOS and Android built on Hyperliquid. With Dexari, users can trade spot and perp markets (with up to 40x leverage) through a self-custodial app. They also receive advanced order types, TradingView charts, no KYC, no lockouts, and cash banking onramps.
Dexari has an ongoing points program that rewards users for trading, referring others, and completing tasks. While unconfirmed at this time, Dexari points recipients could receive an airdrop at a later date.
Points multiples apply for users with higher "tier" rankings, which are based on monthly trade volumes and offer additional trading fee discounts.
💱 Byreal
Incubated by crypto exchange Bybit, Byreal is a Solana-based DEX that many hunters hope will replicate the success of ASTER, a Binance/YZi Labs-backed competitor that surged 333% to a $3.9B market capitalization within days just last week.
Byreal only recently opened to the public on September 30, but the exchange has been in closed beta since the end of June. During this period, Byreal handled $365M of trading volumes and received 347k waitlist applications.
For now, Byreal is constrained to spot-only market (meaning no leverage for crypto degens), but perpetual markets seem like an obvious addition considering their synergies with both spot markets and Bybit’s core product offerings.
Additionally, while there are no Byreal airdrop plans at this time it is highly likely that the early-stage exchange will implement a points program to remain competitive. Such an announcement would bode well for the probability of a future airdrop distribution.
UR, the world's first money app built fully onchain, transforms Mantle Network into a purpose-built vertical platform — The Blockchain for Banking — that enables financial services onchain. Mantle leads the establishment of Blockchain for Banking as the next frontier.
Authoritarian regimes are upgrading their tech stacks. Surveillance cameras, spyware, algorithmic censorship, and AI-driven policing are going global.
How far can this repression system scale?
David and Ryan sit down with Carnegie fellow Steven Feldstein to map today’s toolkit—surveillance, censorship, disinformation, shutdowns, etc.—and unpack Nepal’s recent political backlash, China’s model, and the rise of predictive policing and financial repression.
What will it take to protect open societies going forward? Listen to the full episode to find out! 👇