Solana Guides
TreadFi Airdrop Quick Stats
| Token | TREAD (ERC-20 on Ethereum, bridgeable to Hyperliquid’s HyperCore) |
|---|---|
| Genesis distribution | 16 September 2026 |
| Genesis allocation | 15.2M TREAD (15.2% of supply) |
| Max supply | 100M TREAD, fixed per the Tread Foundation |
| Circulating at launch | 23.8M, per the Tread Foundation’s tokenomics (as listed on CoinMarketCap) |
| Registration deadline | 15 September 2026, 9:00 AM EDT (passed) |
| Launch venues | MEXC, Kraken, Hyperliquid spot |
| Season 2 | None announced as of 7 October 2026 |
Sources: Tread’s docs (bridging, points and fee pages, checked 7 October 2026), Tread Foundation tokenomics as listed on CoinMarketCap, Etherscan, and MEXC’s and Kraken’s listing posts from 16 September 2026.
What Happened at the TREAD Launch
TREAD’s genesis distribution went live on 16 September 2026. It was a retrodrop for past Tread Fi users, and you only received tokens if you registered and accepted the Genesis Distribution Terms at app.tread.fi/points before 9:00 AM EDT on 15 September 2026. Tread’s docs are blunt about it: “The acceptance deadline has passed. There are no exceptions.”
How the tokens were delivered:
- There’s no claim website. Tread says all legitimate activity happens on app.tread.fi, and that Tread Labs will never ask you to connect a wallet or sign a transaction to claim.
- Your allocation went to the address you submitted when you accepted the Genesis Distribution Terms, per Tread’s bridging docs. That isn’t necessarily your Tread wallet, which matters for the holder perks below.
- TREAD is an ERC-20 on Ethereum, contract 0x31EEA0EDeb85B0cB65c1400bd2F4e487fD61B537 (view it on Etherscan). Etherscan shows a 100,000,000 max supply and an upgradeable proxy contract (ERC1967). Kraken’s listing post says there’s “no mint function”, but because the contract can be upgraded, the fixed supply rests on the Foundation’s commitment rather than on the code alone.
TREAD Tokenomics
The Tread Foundation’s allocation, as broken down by Tokenomist:
| Allocation | Share |
|---|---|
| Community & Ecosystem | 35.5% |
| Tread Labs Treasury | 23.8% |
| Team | 18.0% |
| Genesis Distribution | 15.2% |
| Foundation Treasury | 7.5% |
The Foundation’s tokenomics (as listed on CoinMarketCap) say full supply is reached 48 months after TGE. Some third-party coverage says Team and Tread Labs Treasury tokens sit behind a one-year cliff, but the Foundation’s own material confirms neither that nor any next-unlock date, so treat any date you see quoted as unconfirmed. Either way, most of the supply is still to come, and I’d keep that in mind before holding any size.
Where to Buy the TREAD Token (Tread.fi Coin)
TREAD opened on three venues on 16 September 2026:
- MEXC: Innovation Zone, TREAD/USDT from 13:00 UTC, with withdrawals from 17 September (per MEXC’s listing post).
- Kraken: live on 16 September per Kraken’s listing post. Kraken says the app and Instant Buy only switch on once liquidity is deep enough, and that geographic restrictions may apply.
- Hyperliquid spot: the Tread Foundation describes TREAD as a native spot asset on Hyperliquid’s order book, and Tread’s docs cover bridging it from Ethereum to HyperCore.
More markets have appeared since launch, so check CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko for the current list and the live price. I’m not going to guess where the price goes.
Two checks before you buy TREAD. First, match the contract address above, because fake tokens show up after every TGE. Second, check it’s available where you live. I’m UK-based, so a lot of exchange products are off limits to me.
What Holding TREAD Does: Fee Discounts and the Tread Vault
Holding 1,000 or more TREAD in your Tread wallet cuts Tread’s builder fee by 10% to 100% (TIP-1) and gives you a share of the Tread Vault (TIP-2). TIPs are “TREAD Improvement Proposals”, and these two are live in the docs.
TIP-1: Fee Discounts
From Tread’s TIP-1 page, checked 7 October 2026:
| TREAD held | Discount on builder fee |
|---|---|
| 1,000+ | 10% |
| 10,000+ | 25% |
| 100,000+ | 50% |
| 1,000,000+ | 100% (no builder fees) |
The rules that matter:
- No staking or lockup. You just hold it and can move it any time. Kraken’s listing post talks about holders “locking” TREAD for discounts, but Tread’s own page says there’s no lockup, and I’d go by Tread.
- It has to sit in your Tread wallet. TREAD on Ethereum mainnet and HyperCore in that wallet both count. TREAD on an exchange or in another wallet does not.
- Your tier updates after each daily snapshot.
- Final fee = base fee × (1 – discount).
At Tier 0 (under $1M of 14-day volume) the base builder fee is 2.5 bps. On $900k of volume that’s $225 in builder fees. Holding 1,000 TREAD saves you $22.50 of that. Holding 10,000 saves $56.25. Holding 100,000 saves $112.50.
Tread doesn’t charge builder fees on centralised exchanges at all, so if you mainly route Binance or Bybit through Tread, a TREAD discount saves you nothing. It only matters on the perp DEXs that charge a builder fee, and even there Pacifica and Ondo are exceptions (see the fee section). Compare the savings at your real volume against what the tokens cost you before buying for this.
TIP-2: The Tread Vault
The Tread Vault passes on incentives that exchanges send to Tread (airdrops, rebates, tokens) to users. From the TIP-2 page:
- You need at least 1,000 TREAD in your Tread wallet at the daily snapshot, and volume on that exchange routed through Tread while you hold it.
- Your share is your share of cumulative TIP-1 fee savings on that exchange. Volume-tier reductions don’t count, only the TREAD holder discount. Trade there with no TREAD and you get nothing, whatever your volume.
- Nobody can receive more than 100× their cumulative TIP-1 savings on that exchange.
- Payouts go straight to your Tread wallet, with nothing to claim. The details vary with each distribution.
- Users in restricted jurisdictions are excluded, consistent with the Genesis Distribution Terms. The TIP-2 page doesn’t list which countries, so check before you count on it.
You can track fees saved, volume and your share under Points in the app. My take: this is the closest thing to “farming” on Tread right now, but it depends entirely on exchanges choosing to send Tread incentives, and the docs don’t say how much or how often. I wouldn’t buy TREAD for the Vault alone.
Is There a Tread.fi Season 2 Airdrop?
Not officially, as of 7 October 2026. Tread’s Season 1 points page lays out how the first season worked:
- A fixed pool of 100,000 points a week was split pro-rata by adjusted trading volume.
- Each week ran from Wednesday 00:00 UTC to the next Wednesday 00:00 UTC.
- You needed more than $100,000 in adjusted volume in a week to earn points at all.
- Season 1 ended on 18 May 2026.
The same page says: “There is no further official information on the points mechanism for subsequent seasons at this time.” Some airdrop trackers talk about an interim “Season 1.5”, but it isn’t in Tread’s own docs, so treat it as unconfirmed. Watch @tread_fi on X and the Points page in the app for anything official.
What I’d do: only route trades through Tread if the execution tools actually help you. Volume farming has a real cost. Clearing Season 1’s $100,000 weekly threshold at Tier 0 means roughly $25 a week in builder fees on the DEXs, before venue fees and slippage. That’s money gone for points nobody has promised. If you want a live points programme you can run through Tread’s bots instead, our RISEx airdrop guide covers that setup, and Bulk’s points programme is another perp option worth comparing.
Tread’s referral programme ended on 1 October 2026, with a new rewards structure promised but not yet published; existing referral earnings can still be withdrawn once you have at least $500.
Trading Competitions
Tread still runs competitions. You’re ranked on two boards: volume on the competition’s exchange over the whole competition window, and percentage PnL each epoch. Both pay points per epoch: top 1% get 5, top 10% get 3, top 25% get 1. At least 90% of your volume on that exchange, measured over the whole window, has to go through Tread. The ten highest point totals split a prize fund that grows as the whole field trades more. That fund is separate from any airdrop.
Unless you already trade size on one venue, I wouldn’t trade more just to place. The PnL board is the only one a small account has a real chance on.
Tread.fi Features: Execution Algos and TCA
Tread lets you work one order across several venues from one screen, using execution algorithms instead of a single market order:
- VWAP (Volume Weighted Average Price) spreads your order in line with market volume over a time window.
- TWAP (Time Weighted Average Price) splits your order into equal chunks at regular intervals.
- POV (Percentage of Volume) keeps your order at a target share of market volume.
Who this helps: if you’re buying a few thousand dollars of BTC or ETH, the book absorbs that fine and a TWAP mostly just adds Tread’s builder fee on the DEXs. On majors I wouldn’t bother below five figures. Where it earns its fee is size that’s big relative to the book, like a large order on a thin altcoin perp, where a single market order would eat through several levels. On CEXs there’s no builder fee, so using the algos there costs you nothing extra from Tread.
Every order is tracked in real time (fill price vs. market price, slippage, fees, fill rate), and Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA) gives you post-trade reports. Honestly, most retail traders can ignore TCA. If you run size or tune bots, it’s how you find out which venue and mode is actually costing you money on which pair.
Newer Features
Tread’s docs now also cover prediction markets (Polymarket, Kalshi and Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 markets, including market making on them), AI trading agents, a Telegram bot, and a funding rate analytics view in the portfolio tab. None of these earn Tread points right now. Market making on prediction markets is a niche game with thin books, so I’d treat it as an experiment with small size. If Polymarket itself is what you’re after, our Polymarket airdrop guide covers that side.
Fee Breakdown: What You’re Actually Paying
Everything in this section comes from Tread’s fee schedule and DEX swap docs, checked 7 October 2026.
Builder fees only apply on these perp DEXs: Extended, Hyperliquid, Nado, Ondo, Pacifica, Perpl and RISEx. Centralised exchanges such as Binance and Bybit have no builder fee.
Volume tiers (14-day rolling volume on those venues):
| Tier | 14-day volume | Base builder fee |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Under $1M | 2.5 bps |
| 1 | $1M to $5M | 2 bps |
| 2 | $5M to $10M | 1.75 bps |
| 3 | $10M to $50M | 1.5 bps |
| 4 | $50M to $100M | 1.25 bps |
| 5 | $100M+ | 1 bps |
Then the TREAD holder discount comes off that (see TIP-1 above), with two exceptions. Pacifica “does not support dynamic bps”, so fees there stay flat at 2 bps and I wouldn’t count on a TREAD discount on Pacifica. Ondo rounds fees to whole basis points, so the 10% and 25% tiers don’t change what you pay there.
DEX swaps cost a lot more. Swaps through Tread’s OKX DEX integration (Base, BNB Smart Chain, Ethereum and Solana) carry a Tread fee of 0.4% per trade, “calculated based on the dollar notional value of the swap”. That’s 40 bps, 16 times the highest builder fee in the table. On a $1,000 swap you pay $4 to Tread before network costs. For a plain Solana swap, I’d go direct or use an aggregator rather than pay that for convenience.
On top of all this: venue trading fees, which depend on the exchange and your VIP tier. The bot pages in the docs still quote “2 bps”, so go by the fee schedule and the pre-trade fee estimate the app shows you.
Is it worth it? Trading manually on each exchange, you only pay venue fees. Tread’s builder fee pays for the single interface, the execution algos, tracking and bots. Under $1k a trade, I wouldn’t bother. For larger orders or automated strategies, 1 to 2.5 bps is reasonable against the slippage you’d take executing by hand across venues.
Is Tread.fi Safe?
Tread.fi is reasonably safe for CEX trading if your API keys can trade but not withdraw, and only work from Tread’s IP. The risks a retail trader actually faces sit elsewhere.
The hot wallet is the bit I’d watch most. For DEX swaps Tread creates a trading wallet for you and you deposit into it, per its wallet setup docs, and any TREAD you hold for the discount or Vault lives in your Tread wallet too. That’s money sitting in a wallet you reach through someone else’s app. Keep in it what you’re trading with and the TREAD you actually need for a tier, nothing more.
API keys and outages are the other two. If Tread’s systems were ever breached, someone could place trades on your account, but with withdrawals switched off they can’t take the funds out, which is why I’d never tick that box. Outages hit the delta neutral bot hardest: if one exchange’s API goes down mid-trade, you can be left with one leg open and real directional exposure, and a stop loss won’t help much on a venue that isn’t responding.
Then there are scams. Fake “TREAD claim” pages and copycat tokens are the usual way people lose money after a TGE. Our guide to spotting airdrop scams covers the patterns.
Tread Labs’ CEO David Jeong is a former Vice President at Morgan Stanley, and the company raised a $3.5M pre-seed round led by New Form Capital in July 2024. Good to know who’s behind it, but none of the risks above go away.
Verdict: Is Tread.fi Worth Using After the Airdrop?
The genesis drop is done, and if you didn’t register by 15 September you missed it. There’s no live Tread points season, so “farm Tread for a future airdrop” isn’t a plan right now.
Where Tread still makes sense: you trade size across several venues and want TWAP execution, a delta neutral bot for funding, or one dashboard for everything. In that case the tooling is the reason to use it, and any future season is a bonus.
Where I’d skip it: small accounts trading under $1k at a time, or anyone thinking of running a market maker bot to qualify for a season that doesn’t exist yet. You’d be paying fees every day on a guess.
If you’re picking where to park capital for live programmes instead, check the exchanges worth farming on first.
FAQ
Is the TreadFi airdrop over?
Yes. TREAD’s genesis distribution went out on 16 September 2026 to users who accepted the Genesis Distribution Terms before 9:00 AM EDT on 15 September 2026, and Tread’s docs say there are no exceptions for late registrations. If you missed it, you can buy TREAD on the open market or wait for a future season, if one is announced.
How do I claim my TREAD tokens?
You don’t. The genesis allocation went to the address you submitted when you accepted the Genesis Distribution Terms, and there is no claim website. Anything asking you to “claim” TREAD is a scam.
Where can I buy the TREAD token?
TREAD launched on MEXC, Kraken and Hyperliquid spot on 16 September 2026, and CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko list the current markets. Before buying, check the Ethereum contract matches 0x31EEA0EDeb85B0cB65c1400bd2F4e487fD61B537, and check the venue is available in your country.
Will there be a Tread.fi Season 2?
Unconfirmed. Tread’s docs say there’s no further official information on points for later seasons. Watch @tread_fi on X and the Points page in the app.
What does holding TREAD do?
Two things, per Tread’s docs. TIP-1 cuts your builder fee by 10% (1,000 TREAD) up to 100% (1,000,000 TREAD) if you hold it in your Tread wallet. TIP-2, the Tread Vault, shares exchange incentives with holders of at least 1,000 TREAD based on their fee savings.
How does the Tread.fi delta neutral bot work?
It opens a long on one account and a short on another with the same notional split 50/50, using TWAP, so price moves mostly cancel out and you collect the funding difference. It has a 50%, 75% or 90% stop loss (or none), and Wind Down closes both legs. Fees can eat a day’s funding.
Is Tread.fi safe?
It’s reasonably safe for CEX trading if your API keys have withdrawals disabled and are locked to Tread’s IP. The bigger risks are the balance you leave in your Tread wallet, exchange outages during delta neutral trades, and fake TREAD claim sites.
What fees does Tread.fi charge?
No builder fee on centralised exchanges like Binance or Bybit. On the perp DEXs that charge one (Extended, Hyperliquid, Nado, Ondo, Pacifica, Perpl and RISEx) it’s 1 to 2.5 bps depending on your 14-day volume, before any TREAD discount. DEX swaps cost 0.4% per trade. Venue fees come on top.
