AQUAnomics
Last updated
Last updated
The AQUA token is at the center of Aquarius and, to date, has over enabled.
Below, you can learn more about AQUA tokens and what you can do with them.
Aquarius allows AQUA holders to signal where to incentivize liquidity through a voting process, introducing an additional liquidity management layer for the whole Stellar network.
AQUA token holders decide via voting at which market pairs should be incentivized and also define the size of SDEX & AMM rewards for each pair.
Voting happens on-chain, so any user can independently validate the votes. Voting works with most Stellar wallets, including hardware wallets such as Ledger.
After each round of voting, Aquarius aggregates all votes and, based on the results, defines a list of markets where the incentives will be activated.
For example: Carlos has 100,000 AQUA tokens, earns USDC, and often makes payments home to Argentina using the anchored ARST asset on Stellar. To ensure there is sufficuent liquidity on Stellar's USDC/ARST market, Carlos uses his AQUA to vote to incentivize that market. In effect, the likely increase in liquidity on the USDC/ARST thanks to additional incentives for market makers and liquidity providers helps him trade USDC with ARST when needed. Once traded, he can then send the ARST from his Stellar wallet to his bank account thanks to the ARST anchor.
The core aim of Aquarius is to add incentives for market makers and liquidity providers who provide liquidity for specific market pairs. This is achieved by distributing AQUA tokens every hour to those contributing liquidity on specific markets found at .
Liquidity providers can simply deposit funds into AMMs to provide liquidity, whereas market makers help keep order books with individual orders. Anyone can be a liquidity provider or market maker, from financial organizations to regular traders, when they place a limit order in an order book.
Without liquidity providers and market makers, markets would likely have rather low liquidity, creating environments where anyone buying or selling an asset on low liquidity markets would significantly move an asset's price.
In the world of Stellar, users have two ways to buy and sell assets. One is to make a limit order that will cross over an existing order on an order book, and the second is to make a swap (path payment). These techniques require the Stellar network to match orders in order books or AMMs, therefore taking liquidity from markets. So, clearly, the Stellar network as a whole would benefit from having more market makers and more liquidity in the order books.
100B AQUA tokens have been issued on the Stellar network. This is a hard limit on the total supply. No more AQUA tokens will ever be created.
The initial allocation was as follows:
50% dedicated to SDEX traders and AMM liquidity providers in the form of rewards: 50,000,000,000 AQUA
20% set for airdrops. All unclaimed AQUA will be allocated to the Community DAO fund: 20,000,000,000 AQUA
10% offered to institutional investors with a 3-year vesting: 10,000,000,000 AQUA
10% granted to Aquarius team members and future employees with a 3-year vesting: 10,000,000,000 AQUA
5% allocated to voting and staking rewards: 5,000,000,000 AQUA
2.5% granted to advisors and partners (both with 3-year vesting): 2,500,000,000 AQUA
2.5% reserved for an emergency fund: 2,500,000,000 AQUA
Most of the created AQUA tokens are allocated for SDEX & AMM rewards, but the initial AQUA distribution happened via airdrops.
5% of the AQUA supply was distributed during the first airdrop, and 15% was allocated to the second airdrop.
As per March 2025, no further airdrops are planned.
AQUA token holders can also be entitled to additional benefits across other Stellar ecosystem projects.
Ultra Stellar offers various benefits to those holding AQUA tokens. AQUA holders can earn cashback on their crypto purchases when holding a certain amount of AQUA. In addition, increased referral bonuses can be earned and paid in AQUA.
These are just some of the benefits that have been introduced for token holders by projects, with more expected as we expand.
Token Details: asset code: AQUA home domain: aqua.network issuer account: