Fee Model

Merkl's fees are deducted directly from the tokens deposited into the campaign. You do not need to send any extra tokens to cover them — the fee is taken out of the campaign budget itself.

Pay-as-You-Go

Standard campaign fee: 3% of distributed incentives

Airdrop discount: JSON-based airdrops are charged at a reduced rate of 0.5%

Degressive fee structure: The more you distribute (excluding airdrops), the lower your effective fee rate. This makes Merkl increasingly cost-efficient at scale. Fees are calculated based on the total amount distributed across all campaigns and addresses associated with your entity:

  • 3% on the first $1M distributed
  • 2.25% on amounts between $1M and $2.5M
  • 1.75% on amounts between $2.5M and $5M
  • 1.5% on amounts above $5M

Example: If you distribute $3M in total, you'll pay 3% on the first $1M ($30k), 2.25% on the next $1.5M ($33.75k), and 1.75% on the final $500k ($8.75k), for a total fee of $72.5k (2.42% effective rate).

Commitment Model (For High-Volume Campaigns)

For projects planning to distribute significant incentives, Merkl offers a 25% fee discount when you commit upfront to campaigns distributing more than $500k in total incentives.

How it works: Pay your fees in advance for campaigns totaling at least $500k in distributions, and receive an automatic 25% reduction on those fees.

Contact the Merkl team to discuss commitment model options and unlock volume discounts.

Unclaimed Rewards Policy

Campaign creators on Merkl can freely reallocate all unclaimed rewards once their campaign ends.

One year after the campaign's end, if the campaign creators have not previously reallocated rewards and if there remain unclaimed rewards, Merkl reserves the right to reclaim them.

How distribution fees are applied

  • Base: the fee is computed on the total amount of tokens deposited into the campaign (the full campaign budget you fund at creation).
  • Timing: fees are collected when the campaign starts, not at the end. You deposit the full budget, Merkl takes its cut upfront, and the remainder is what gets distributed to users.
  • No top-up needed: you do not need to "calculate the fee on top" and deposit extra. The fee comes out of what you already deposited.

Example: You launch a campaign with 100 tokens and the applicable fee is 3%.

  • Merkl collects 3 tokens when the campaign starts.
  • Users will receive a total of 97 tokens over the course of the campaign.
  • You only need to send 100 tokens — no extra.

Fees do not change your campaign parameters

The fee is taken from the budget, but it does not change the parameters of the campaign. If you set a capped APR, a target boost, or any other onchain target, Merkl will try to sustain those parameters using the post-fee budget.

In other words: Merkl does not automatically scale up your campaign budget or APR target to compensate for the fee — what you configure is what the engine will try to deliver, with the smaller (post-fee) amount of tokens.

Example — fixed APR campaign: You configure a campaign with a 3% fixed APR and a budget of 100 tokens.

  • Merkl takes its fee from the 100 tokens at campaign start.
  • The engine then tries to sustain the 3% capped APR using the remaining budget.
  • The APR cap is not raised to offset the fee. If sustaining 3% APR requires more rewards than the post-fee budget allows, the campaign will simply run out of budget sooner.

If you want the post-fee budget to match a specific target distribution, you should size the initial deposit accordingly.