Maker Incentive Program

Last updated: 15 March 2023

Introduction

To encourage market makers to provide liquidity to specific markets on Drift, qualified market makers can earn up to USDC $2,000 a week per market with this Program.

Who Can Join?

Anyone that can programmatically market make on Drift is invited to apply for the Program. Check out our protocol’s SDK and our open sourced market making bots to get started.

Eligible market makers will be qualified on application. Reach out to our Head of BD (https://t.me/thedamoo) to apply.

Apply today and earn up to $2,000USDC per market in weekly cash rewards.

What Markets are Qualified?

The Program applies to the following markets on Drift:

• SOL-PERP
• BONK-PERP

Rewards are per market. Qualified market makers can earn up to $4,000USDC if they qualify as Tier 1 in both SOL-PERP and BONK-PERP markets.

Program Length

1. The Program will run each week starting on Monday, 00:00 UTC and concluding on Sunday, 23:59 UTC (”Program Period”).
   • The first date for this program will be 00:00 UTC Monday, 6 March 2023.
2. Auto-renewal of the Program is not guaranteed. Drift will notify participating market makers if the Program is paused for any particular week.
3. This Program will conclude on 00:00 UTC Friday, 31 March 2023.

Rewards

SOL-PERP

In addition to the standard 2bps rebate for all market maker orders on Drift, we are offering Qualified Market Makers in the SOL-PERP market an additional payment of:

• Tier 1: $2,000 USDC
• Tier 2: $600 USDC
• Tier 3: $200 USDC
• Tier 4: $100 USDC

BONK-PERP

In addition to the standard 2bps rebate for all market maker orders on Drift, we are offering Qualified Market Makers in the BONK-PERP market an additional payment of:

• Tier 1: $2,000 USDC
• Tier 2: $600 USDC

Note: see subheading 'Score Calculation' below.

Qualification Requirements

Volume Qualifications per Tier

In order to qualify for the particular tiers, market makers must:

• Tier 1: be the #1 contributor in maker volume across the Program Period.
• Tier 2: 3m in maker volume across the Program Period.
• Tier 3: 2m in maker volume across the Program Period.
• Tier 4: 1m in maker volume across the Program Period.

Minimum Up-time Qualifications per Tier

Market makers must maintain a baseline minimum up-time of:

• Tier 1: > 90%
• Tier 2: > 85%
• Tier 3: > 80%
• Tier 4: > 80%

Up-time is measured by tracking the market maker's bid and offer prices and determining the percentage of time that they have a bid and offer active within 20bps of the best bid and offer.

The minimum up-time requirement will be calculated based on this percentage of presence over the Program Period.

If at any time, the Solana blockchain goes down or becomes unreliable, those snapshots will be removed from the calculation of the market maker’s up-time.

Score Calculation

Minimum Liquidity Depth

There is minimum liquidity depth prescribed for the cumulative value of orders within a particular bracket (i.e. A1, B1, A2, B2... etc). That value is:

• Bid and Ask: $5,000

If a maker's cumulative liquidity provided within that particular bracket is less than $5,000, then the calculation of their score for that particular bracket will be penalised.

Depth Multipliers

• Your score is based on the size of your post-only limit orders placed as a proportion to the total liquidity placed within that bracket.
• Multipliers are applied to award a higher weighting to liquidity provided closer to the best bid & ask price.

Average Score

• Random snapshots will be taken each day.
• The market maker’s daily score will be an average of its scores calculated across that day’s snapshots.
• The market maker’s average monthly score is calculated as the average of its daily scores.

Formula

Scores are calculated according to the following formula:

Maker Score Calculation Formula



Note: Orders that qualify for one bracket will be ineligible for another bracket

• Worked Example
  • Here, we’ve averaged the total bid & liquidity (Q) from a snapshot of the OB to the right.
  • We have then estimated (on the lower end) the qualified MM’s min bid/ask order size.
  • Applied the equation above and the MM arrives at a score of 76.62
  • Qualified MM gets Tier 1 of the Reward (provided they traded the most maker volume over that same period)



Additional Terms

1. Any wash trading or self matching is strictly prohibited. If wash trading or self matching is observed in order to manipulate market share, then the incentives for that month are forfeited. This is at the sole discretion of Drift Protocol.
2. Market makers will be able to track their performance here: Drift Maker Performance

Payment Options

1. Qualified Market Makers will receive their payments in USDC.
2. Payout will be at the conclusion of the Program contingent on passing the Qualification Requirements.