Create a campaign

Everything you need to know to create campaigns on Merkl

🪜 Step-by-step process for single campaign creation

  1. Go to Merkl Studio Merkl Studio is your command center to launch, manage and optimize your incentive campaigns.

Merkl Studio homepage

  1. Connect your wallet

Connect the wallet holding the rewards to distribute. Make sure you’re connected on the chain on which you want to distribute the rewards. To see all chains that Merkl supports, check the Status page in the Merkl App.

You can create cross-chain campaigns with Merkl — incentivize an asset on one chain while distributing the rewards on another (e.g. incentivize an WETH-USDC pool on Ethereum by distributing WBTC on Base).

  1. Click on Create Campaign

Click on the Create Campaign button to create a single campaign.

  1. Select your incentive category

Choose your incentive category by clicking on the appropriate card.

To incentivize Aave lending positions, Uniswap V2, or similar liquidity pools, please use the Token Holding campaign category.

  1. Configure the campaign

Fill out campaign details such as the asset to incentivize, the asset type (token or point), the reward amount to distribute, a start date and an end date, etc. The details required will depend on the campaign type you selected. Please check the campaign types page to get detailed explanations of each required parameter.

Configure the campaign

The total rewards amount is the total amount of rewards to be distributed over the whole campaign duration (a maintenance fee may be applied on top).

For each token to distribute as reward, Merkl sets a minimum amount of token that can be distributed per hour. If your token amount is too low (generally parameters are calibrated so that you cannot distribute less than $1 per hour), then you will not be able to create your campaign.

  1. Set restrictions

This section allows you to set blacklist and/or whitelist for your campaign. Blacklisted addresses won't receive any rewards, whereas whitelisted addresses will exclusively receive the campaign's rewards (excluding all other addresses).

You can also verify if an address is a known & supported forwarder contract: rewards distributed to this address will be forwarded to all users who deposited funds in this contract. You can learn more about this in the forwarding section.

Set restrictions

  1. Personalize your campaign with customization options

Campaigns on Merkl can be fully tailored to your needs. You can choose whether or not to apply customization options such as boosts, forwarders and more. New options are constantly being added to Merkl! You can check out the non-exhaustive list of Merkl customization options here.

Personalize your campaign

You may also be asked to provide a deposit URL — this is the link to the asset you want to incentivize (e.g. a lending market, liquidity pool, etc.). Since Merkl is non-custodial, users must interact directly with the protocols to be eligible for rewards. Merkl does not hold any user funds.

  1. Review campaign and accept Terms

Double-check all the information. Once you’re done, hit the Accept Terms button, and confirm in your wallet.

  1. Approve and launch

Approve rewards transfer from your wallet to Merkl, then create the campaign by signing the transaction. You can sign and submit using either an EOA account or a multisig wallet.

Regardless of the method you choose, you will need to follow these 3 steps:

  • accept the T&C

  • approve the tokens for transfer

  • deposit the tokens

Using an EOA Account:

  • Double-check your campaign configuration.

  • Read and accept Merkl's T&Cs by clicking on the Accept button and signing using your wallet.

  • Approve the tokens for transfer and deposit the amount you want to incentivize, plus the maintenance fee of 3%.

Using a multisig wallet (Safe Wallet):

The recommended method for distributing rewards with Merkl using a multisig is through the Gnosis Safe Transaction Builder. To learn how to deploy your campaign from a multisig or Gnosis Safe Transaction Builder, check this page where everything is explained in more detail.

Congratulations! You have launched your incentive campaign! 🎉

Please note that once created, your campaign may take up to one hour to become visible on the front-end.

Test campaigns

Merkl is not deployed on testnets, but you can still run test campaigns using our test token: aglaMerkl

These test campaigns are not mandatory — they’re available to help you experiment with how Merkl works using valueless tokens, so you can better prepare your upcoming campaigns. However, since they consume computation resources on our end, we encourage you to use this feature only when there’s a clear need

Note that test campaigns will not appear on the Merkl app and will not be visible to users, as they are automatically filtered out from the interface.

To get started, send us a message and we’ll provide you with our test token. aglaMerkl has no value and is only intended for creating test campaigns on Merkl.

You can then create your test campaign using aglaMerkl tokens. While the campaign won’t show up in the Merkl app, you’ll be able to check everything is working properly via the Merkl API, using the campaign ID generated at creation. You can refer to the Campaign management page for more info regarding the mostly used endpoints.

Make sure to verify that:

  • distribution is functioning as expected

  • key metrics like TVL are correctly computed

If everything looks good in the API, it will appear correctly in the Merkl front end once the real campaign is live!

If you need help to create your first test campaigns, feel free to reach out to us.

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