Apple Farm Season 2 is now live on Etherlink as of July 24, with over $3 million in rewards to help grow the network’s DeFi activities.
The program is created by Merkl and supported by Nomadic Labs, and is aimed at encouraging users to trade, lend, and add liquidity across DeFi apps by offering incentives through a new token system.
Also, the new season introduces applXTZ, a fresh reward token that lets users instantly access 20% of their rewards, with the rest unlocked slowly over six months. This way, users are encouraged to keep using the network for a longer time.
“Season 1 showed there’s strong demand for smart, well-structured incentives,” said David Relkin, Head of DeFi at Nomadic Labs. “With Season 2, we’re leveling up, more partners, more flexibility, and reward mechanics designed to keep users active and engaged over time.”
The season comes after a successful first run, which brought in over $47.7 million in total value locked (TVL) and distributed $3 million in XTZ rewards.
Season 2 has more DeFi projects involved, including Jumper Exchange, Lombard, Curve, OKU, Gearbox, Stacy.fi, Hanji, Superlend, Uranium.io, and IguanaDEX.More projects are expected to join as the season continues. Every two weeks, the rewards get updated to match what users are doing on the network.
“We’re excited to continue our partnership with Etherlink through Apple Farm Season 2,” Pablo Veyrat, co-founder of Merkl said in the press release. “This season is more dynamic, more accessible, and we think it’s going to drive even stronger engagement across the board.”
Etherlink has also made big technical upgrades in recent months. Smart contract storage now runs up to 30 times faster, and bridging assets between networks has dropped from 15 days to less than one minute.
Other new features involve Midas launching tokenized assets and Oku launching Uniswap v3-style trading instruments to Etherlink.
Season 1 also exceeded $88.5 million in on-chain asset value and helped Etherlink become a top choice for Ethereum-based projects looking for better speed and low-cost DeFi options.
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