BASE (BASE)

Those who know me know that I have always focused on institutional moves in my explanations. Because our business is with institutions. Today I will explain what a small investor like you and me can do in the cryptocurrency market. In this market, the only way to make money is NOT just TRADE.

How can we make money besides trading?

1- As in the past, there are/will be increases on testnets. If your capital is limited, testing the security of newly created networks, trying to find bugs, and actively using the platform become extremely important for the future. Even on networks that have moved to mainnet (e.g., $BASE) you should no longer just do two swaps and one stake as before, but actively use the platform.

Use bridges, stake, generate txs, find translation or typo errors and share them with the platform. This applies not only to BASE but to all. This is one of the first ways a small investor can earn money besides trading, the result being an airdrop.

2- Providing liquidity / LP farming. This old method still generates revenue because people keep buying and selling, and there will always be opportunities to earn from it. What will you do?

On decentralized exchanges (Uni, sushi, pancake, aero) you will add liquidity for trading pairs such as ETH/USDC, HYPE/SOL, BTC/USD1.

I'll explain it in the simplest way;

Suppose you have $5,000, you purchase the pair you want to add liquidity to, then lock them on the platform within a certain price range or the overall price range. That's the whole transaction in its simplest form. Now you earn fees from trades executed within your chosen price range. Your risk is near minimal (large pairs) so you aren't even risking your capital.

3- Participating in governance, taking part in votes.

If you hold a long‑term coin, staking it in the platform's system gives you voting power. After the votes, you have a chance to earn rewards or incentives from the platform. Those who remember, at one point in the $ATOM ecosystem we were earning crazy amounts from $EVMOS rewards, and the ATOM system was airdropping on every action.

This allows you to monetize the coin you hold; see if similar opportunities exist for the coins you keep. For example, a while ago the $MORPHO I talked about months earlier airdropped.

4- Arbitrage. Doing it without bots is very difficult now, but it can still be done on some pairs. It was easier to do without bots back then.

In trading pairs where institutional bots are not very active (low volume), you can find a coin listed on a large platform and the same coin listed on a smaller platform and track its price movements (finding multiple pairs is better).

In low‑volume markets, sudden moves can result in much different pricing. How does it work? When there is a sudden drop, the shallow depth in the low‑volume market causes a much larger price decline. This gives you a chance to buy cheap until prices equalize. After buying, you can send the asset to the high‑volume platform and earn profit from the price difference even if the price stays the same.

Capturing this manually is now very hard because bots are actively doing it, but keep it in mind in case you need it one day. Honestly, those who remember could even do this across exchanges, but now everything is automated and price gaps disappear quickly.

In the past it was even done between centralized exchanges, especially via the Chiliz exchange.

5- Creating content. By boosting your X (Twitter) account, producing content for projects, earning points and receiving airdrops. This is the new trend. Polymarket seems to reward this, and BASE appears to do the same. The reason is:

Instead of allocating $1 million for marketing, a project says, “Brother, promote us and we’ll give you points, then we’ll airdrop to those points and you’ll earn money.” So they get free advertising. It’s a massive cost‑reduction method for projects.

So what I’m saying is, you don’t have to only trade in the crypto market, friends. There are many ways to make money; don’t lock yourself into one approach.

Do everything. Let trading be your priority, but also look at the others.

I wonder if the $BASE snapshot is taken already 👀