How do I lock AQUA into ICE with Aquarius?

Modified on Tue, 24 Sep at 2:15 PM

You can freeze your AQUA into ICE and enable boosted liquidity rewards and increased voting flexibility & power.

The idea behind ICE tokens is to give loyal AQUA holders more flexibility, increased voting power, and additional benefits within Aquarius. The process of turning AQUA into ICE tokens all happens on the Aquarius website at https://aqua.network/locker.

Once in the locker, users decide how much AQUA to lock and for what duration. The longer the
lock, the more ICE tokens a user can receive.

Users who lock their AQUA receive four additional non-transferable tokens inside their Stellar wallets, specifically for use in the Aquarius ecosystem. These tokens are:

All four tokens are minted on the Stellar network and use the aqua.network domain name. These are non-transferable tokens, so they can’t be bought, sold, or transferred to another Stellar wallet.

Each of the ICE tokens brings additional features & benefits to those who decide to freeze AQUA.

The main benefit of ICE is the ability to boost your rewards on provided liquidity. A wallet can gain up to a 2.5x boost on its potential rewards based on the boost formula.

UpvoteICE & downvoteICE are used to select markets that will receive AQUA liquidity rewards and downvote markets in liquidity voting.

With governICE, you can vote for or against active governance proposals.

Freezing AQUA

The process of freezing AQUA into ICE is quick and easy, with the tool helping create trustlines and distribute all four ICE tokens to users. Freezing is done via claimable balances on Stellar, ensuring immutability and transparency.

Learn more: Aquarius locker

1) Go to AQUA overview on LOBSTR and tap "Lock AQUA to ICE".

2) Connect to Aquarius via WalletConnect or LOBSTR signer extension.

3) Choose the AQUA amount and period for which you'd like to lock AQUA.

The longer AQUA is frozen, the more of each ICE token is given. The longest possible lock is three years. For every 1 AQUA locked for a maximum period, you will receive:

10 ICE tokens
10 governICE tokens
10 liquidity voting tokens (8 upvoteICE + 2 downvoteICE)

4) Once you choose the amount and the period, click "Freeze AQUA".

Note: Freezing AQUA requires you to add the 4 ICE trustlines. Each trustline will reserve 0.5 XLM of your wallet balance.

Upvote, downvote, and govern ICE all have the same voting power as AQUA. So a user locking 1 Million AQUA for the max of three years would receive:

10 million ICE
10 million governICE
8 million upvoteICE
2 million downvoteICE

That means their voting power increased 10 times compared to their state before freezing AQUA. ICE tokens are distributed immediately when a user locks AQUA, instantly allowing for boosted votes across Aquarius products.

Melting ICE

As the unfreezing date of AQUA gets closer, ICE tokens melt. The action of melting means voting power decreases over time unless a user freezes more AQUA.

Melting occurs through Stellar’s native clawback operation. Aquarius can scan Stellar addresses & claimable balances for all four ICE tokens daily and burn a percentage of them. This mechanic allows Aquarius to reduce a user’s ICE holdings and any votes made, as AQUA tokens get closer to their unlock date.

As a simple example, a user locks 1000 AQUA into ICE for a max of three years, giving them 10,000 ICE. These ICE tokens will melt linearly over time as the AQUA unlock date approaches.

Every year, the user’s ICE holdings will reduce by 3000 until the amount of ICE tokens reaches 1000.

Once AQUA reaches the unlock date, and the amount of ICE tokens is equal to the number of AQUA tokens locked, the user can unlock their AQUA. At this time the user can claim the AQUA, and their ICE tokens will be burned immediately.

LOBSTR has introduced the Loyalty Tiers Program, which extends benefits depending on the amount of AQUA and ICE tokens you hold in your portfolio balance. To learn more about the criteria and benefits of the LOBSTR Loyalty Program, please refer to this article.