Voting for markets

How to find markets, place ICE votes, earn bribes, and withdraw votes in the Aquarius voting interface.

This guide walks through voting for markets in the Aquarius interface. For how liquidity voting works under the hood — on-chain claimable balances, eligibility thresholds, and reward caps — see Aquarius voting.

Voting requires ICE: lock AQUA into ICE first, then vote with upvoteICE. Votes can be withdrawn at any time. Delegated dICE votes the same way.

Search for pairs

Once inside the voting platform, you can start exploring Stellar market pairs. You can use the tabs to view the most popular pairs, top voted pairs, or pairs with bribes. To add a pair to your vote, click Add To Vote.

You can also use the search bar to find specific pairs, including pairs no one has voted for yet. These will show a Create Pair tab next to them. Adding these to your vote will enable others to vote for this pair. Creating pairs requires up to 5 XLM, which gets used to make new voting wallets containing trustlines for the assets in question.

Selected pairs

As you add and create pairs, they get placed in your voting basket. You can navigate to it anytime by clicking the Chosen Pairs bubble in the bottom right corner.

Inside the modal window, adjust the amount of ICE you dedicate to voting, then break down how much to allocate to each pair. When you are done, proceed to submitting the transaction.

Earning bribes

Some markets carry bribes — rewards offered to voters of that market, paid out daily. Click a market's bribe bubble to see how long the bribe is active and which Stellar assets are offered as incentives.

To receive a bribe, vote for the bribed market and make sure your wallet has trustlines enabled for the offered assets — the payouts arrive in your wallet automatically. Bribed markets are listed under the With Bribes tab; to offer a bribe on a market yourself, see Creating Bribes.

Adding more votes

If you decide to add more votes to the market you already voted for, you can do so by clicking the 👍 button which will add this market to the voting basket once again.

Withdrawing votes

To withdraw your votes, go to My Aquarius, open the My Liquidity Votes tab and click Manage unlocked votes.

In the modal, select the markets you want to withdraw votes from and click Claim selected to build the transaction.

Voting boosts for paired markets

Markets paired with AQUA receive a 50% voting boost, and markets paired with USDC or XLM receive 30%. The boosts are cumulative and multiply the market's votes — raising its share of rewards — until the market reaches 10% of adjusted votes.

Liquidity providers, not voters, benefit from the boost. See Deposit & withdraw liquidity to provide liquidity.