Vela Exchange Grand Prix… Leaked?

Sounds like click-bait, but I have it on good authority that the details of Vela’s upcoming Grand Prix are even bigger than you might think. It’s no secret that they have received a whopping 1,000,000 $ARB to giveaway to the community. Users like you and I can take advantage of this — all we have to do is prepare and be in the know. Continue reading to learn how you can get a piece of this $2.3M prize pool.

rebranding imminent

Vela has been fairly tight lipped this year as they prepare to rollout the next generation of perpetual exchange on Arbitrum’s L2 network. If 2023 was any indication of what to expect from this team, we’re in for a treat. I had the luck to join in on the later rounds of their original Hyper VLP program, and can say with the feeling that only cash in the bank can provide — they know how to reward supporters. And 2024’s Grand Prix kickoff will be no different.

So what do we know right now about the mysterious Grand Prix event? Here’s the rundown, but read on to the bottom to learn the tips for earning the credits you need to be the winner.

• As said, but no point in not saying this a million times, there are 1,000,000 $ARB tokens up for grabs
• Made up of multiple seasons, which are further broken up into rounds. Season one offers us 400,000 $ARB, that’s nearly half the total!
• Promise ‘rags to riches’ storyline hints at a better chance for any user to win BIG.
• Users earn ‘credits’ for a chance to win various rewards. Right now we have confirmed that we can win ARB, VELA, esVELA.

Since we know that Arbitrum’s STIP program is short term, we can deduce that these ARB rewards must be given to users by March. This clearly indicates that all of the ARB will be front-loaded into the Season 1 kickoff of the new Grand Prix event!

You still with me!? I hope so, because this is where the real alpha begins.

According to some Discord posts from the team and within their small, alpha communities, the first users that earn 100,000 credits will receive some sort of reward imminently! Although I cannot know precisely what to expect, you should consider that this is the first reward to start a major event, and that there are so many rewards to give away that this must be worthwhile to farm. I scoured the internet, web2, web3.. All the webs. I looked into them and found us a consistent set of rules for how credits are earned.

So here’s how:

You trade, you earn credits. But it isn’t that simple.

• BTC and ETH appear to give double the amount of credits
• Penalty for trading forex only gives 1/3 credits, but also way less risky
• If you win, you win again! That’s right, winning trades earns more credits on top of the previous amounts. It actually looks like you get a lot of credits from winning trades
• Shorting appears to give slightly more than longing
• Minting the LP token VLP is a safe and simple way to rack up points. I minted $10,000 worth of VLP and received hundreds of thousands of points. I later minted 1 VLP in order to find the exact rate. You receive a staggering 25 credits per VLP
• There is another way to earn credits, but I have not figured that out. Occassionally I have received a random number of them while doing nothing, but each time was a small amount. Maybe this is a reward for being active on the site for some amount of time?

If you’re worried that you have to be a master trader to earn credits, you’re wrong

As you can see above, minting VLP is a safe approach to accumulating credits. They even have a simple daily check in for an easy 1,000 credits!

Last, this is certainly a trading-style competition that will favor the traders who can perform, spend, and win. But, there are also bonus events scattered throughout the app. As mentioned before, minting VLP earns massive credits. On top of that, the APR for staking VLP is an absurd 50% APR, most of which is paid out in $ARB.

After minting $10,000 worth of VLP, I have earned $12 in $ARB in a single day, plus about $2 more is esVELA/ USDC.e. That’s $420 a month on a stablecoin. Even better — VLP has resumed it’s appreciation run since the team mentioned some change was made to the model (more on that with a later v2 announcement). Don’t miss this chance before the pool becomes saturated! This is true passive income without worrying about earning deflationary locked tokens or tokens that need to be vested. You stake dollars and you receive ARB and more dollars. It’s that simple. To date VLP has not taken any lasting hits, and the team has been clear on their resolve to protect the vault.