Delta-neutral points farming on perp DEXs

Delta-neutral points farming means holding a long on one perp DEX and a short of the same size on another, so price moves roughly cancel while both venues credit your activity. The points are not free. You pay taker fees, a price gap between the legs and sometimes net funding. Divide that cost by the points you earn and you get a price per point.

What do perp DEX points programs reward?

Each venue writes its own rules, and most keep the exact formula private. Broadly, programs score four things: trading volume, open interest held over time, the quality of your flow, and liquidity or vault deposits. The table sums up the main programs in our venue notes; Lighter RH (Lighter's separate exchange on Robinhood Chain), 01 Exchange and Ondo Perps run weekly points or rewards programs too.

Some venues have no program. Hyperliquid's original one ended in 2024, and none of the CEXs we track runs one. Aster called its Feb–Mar 2026 stage its last trading-mining stage, and press reports say GRVT's Season 2.0 ended on 30 June 2026. The Points column on the exchanges page gives a short status for each venue, and each venue page has the full, dated note.

Why hedge across two venues?

An unhedged position farms points while carrying the full price risk. A $20,000 long loses $2,000 on a 10% drop, more than six months of fees in the churn example below. A hedged pair cancels most of that move. Each leg is still an ordinary position on its own venue, so each program sees normal volume and open interest.

Doing it on one venue rarely works. In one account, a long and a short of the same market usually net into a single position, so you hold nothing and pay fees for it. Some programs limit or ban extra accounts on one venue (Lighter RH bans multiple accounts for points), and fills between your own accounts are self-trading, which programs exclude or punish. Both legs would also pay the same funding rate, leaving no funding spread to earn. Two venues with programs give you two streams of points for one hedge.

Hedged is not the same as safe. Each venue holds its own margin, so one leg can be liquidated while the other sits in profit elsewhere. The guide to funding arbitrage risks covers this and the other ways a pair breaks.

What does one point really cost?

cost per point = (fees + price gap between legs + slippage + net funding paid) / points

• Fees. One round trip is four taker fills: open and close on both legs. In bps of one leg's notional, fee_rt = 2 × (taker_long + taker_short).
• Price gap. The two legs rarely fill at exactly the same price, at entry or at exit. On thin books, slippage adds to it.
• Net funding. A funding spread against you is a cost; one in your favour is income and lowers the cost.

Here is a hypothetical week on two venues, worked both ways. Venue A charges 2.5 bps taker (Extended's base tier) and venue B charges 0 (a standard Lighter account). Each leg is $20,000, so fee_rt = 2 × (2.5 + 0) = 5 bps, or $10 per round trip. We also assume a 2 bps price gap per round trip ($4) and a funding spread of +10% APR in your favour.

Suppose the two programs credited 40 points in total for the churn week (a made-up number: the formulas are not published). Fees alone then cost $1.75 per point. Add the price gap and subtract the funding, and the net comes to about $1.49 per point. For volume programs, a handier yardstick is the cost per $1 million of volume: each churn round trip costs $14 for $80,000 of combined volume, about $175 per $1M before funding.

One catch with zero-fee legs: some programs score the fees you pay (Hibachi and RWA Perp list it), and in our own farming at least one program counted only fills that paid a fee. Cheap volume can earn few points.

Volume programs or open-interest programs: churn or hold?

Churning pays fees on every round trip; holding pays them once and can earn the funding spread. Pick the style the program rewards.

• Volume programs (Pacifica and Variational score mostly volume) pay for turnover, so the fee schedule sets the price of a point. On Variational there is no trading fee, but every trade is a quote from its market maker, so the quote spread is the real cost per round trip.
• Open-interest and time programs (RISEx scores time-weighted open interest, RWA Perp counts holding time, Lighter and Hibachi include open interest) reward positions that stay open. This is where the hold column pays off.
• Quality-of-flow programs (Nado, Arcus) look at how you trade. Rapid open-and-close loops of the same size may count for less than you expect.

Most programs blend these and shift the weights, so compare your weekly points with your volume and open interest.

How can funding pay for the hold?

In a hedged pair you choose which venue gets the long. Put the long where funding is lower and the short where it is higher. The spread, APR of the short venue minus APR of the long venue, is then positive, and while it stays positive it pays you at every funding settlement (hourly on most DEXs, less often on some venues and markets). In the hold column above, funding more than covered the fees and the price gap.

To find such a pair, open the funding rate screener, limit the venue filter to the points venues you use, and rank by the 7-day spread rather than the current rate. DEX funding moves fast, and farmers crowding one side of a venue can push it against themselves. The DEX vs CEX funding guide explains why DEX rates can run hotter. Decide in advance when to exit if the spread flips.

Which rules void points?

• Sybils. One person running many accounts to look like many users. Lighter excludes sybils, Lighter RH bans multiple accounts for points, and Arcus says deliberate account clustering cuts points.
• Self-trading and wash trading. Lighter excludes self-trading, RWA Perp ignores self-trades, wash trades and linked accounts, Arcus penalises self-matching, Nado penalises wash flow, and Lighter RH bans trading between your own accounts.
• Retroactive cuts. Points are discretionary. Programs can change the rules or cut rewards after the fact.
• Region rules. Venues and their reward programs are not available everywhere. Use only venues you are allowed to use; we do not help anyone get around restrictions.

The pattern that stays within the rules is simple: one account per person per venue, and trades against the market, never against yourself.

What are points worth?

Nobody knows until a token exists and trades, and no venue promises a conversion rate. Seasons also end: Variational's distributions end no later than Q4 2026. Our own working rule is that points are a bonus, not a budget for losses. Put a conservative value on a point and compare it with your cost per point. Rates and programs change all the time, and nothing here is investment advice.

A practical setup

1. Pick two points venues you can use. RISEx needs an invite code, and Arcus was still whitelist-only in late September 2026.
2. Pick a coin with liquid books on both venues and a positive 7-day funding spread in the direction you will hold.
3. Size and leverage the legs so that one sharp move cannot liquidate a leg. At 3x, a 25–30% move against one leg can be enough, so keep a margin buffer on both venues.
4. Open both legs at the same size, as close together in time as you can (a standard Lighter account delays taker orders by about 300 ms).
5. Each week, log fees, funding, the price gap and points, from both accounts' equity rather than from a model.
6. Stop when the cost per point exceeds your own estimate of a point's value, or when the funding spread turns against you for longer than the points justify.

Some venues give a small points boost to accounts opened with a referral code, which usually binds at signup and cannot be changed later.