Web3 Affiliate Programs: Wallets, On-Chain Referrals, Integrator Fees and the Honest Risks

Web3 affiliate programs are the referral and revenue-share deals you find outside the big exchanges: hardware and software wallets, on-chain trading apps, crypto data tools, swap and bridge infrastructure, and the quest platforms that hand out points. Some pay like normal affiliate programs. Many pay in tokens or points. And some of the best money in Web3 doesn't come from an "affiliate program" at all, but from a fee you add yourself to every swap that runs through your site or bot.

I've been making money online since 2010, and I've watched every crypto cycle produce the same kind of article: a table of famous protocol names, a column of "30–50% commission", and a "my payout" column with suspiciously round numbers. When I went to check those programs on their official pages, a lot of them simply weren't there. So this guide does it the other way round. Only programs I could confirm on the projects' own docs and help centers made the cut, and where a famous name has no affiliate program, I say so.

If you're after exchange programs like Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit or OKX, plus tax tools and instant swap services, that's covered in my separate comparison of the best crypto affiliate programs. This article picks up where that one stops. And the usual rule for this site's crypto section: I write about crypto as something you promote or build on, not as an investment tip.

What counts as a Web3 affiliate program?

A Web3 affiliate program is any deal where a crypto product pays you for bringing it users or volume, and in Web3 that happens in four quite different ways. Knowing which one you're looking at tells you more about your future income than any percentage on a landing page.

1. Classic affiliate or referral programs. A company (a wallet maker, a data platform) tracks your link or code and pays a commission per sale or a share of fees. It works like any SaaS or e-commerce program, except the payout is often in crypto.
2. On-chain referral codes. Decentralized trading apps (DEXs, short for decentralized exchanges) record your code in the protocol itself. When your referrals pay trading fees, a slice is credited to your wallet automatically. No affiliate manager, no approval, no invoice.
3. Integrator fees. Swap aggregators and bridge APIs let you plug their routing into your own widget, app or Telegram bot and add your own fee on top. Nobody "approves" you; you're a builder, not an affiliate, and the fee lands in your wallet.
4. Points and quests. Wallets, marketplaces and quest platforms reward referrals with points, campaign bonuses or future token eligibility. Sometimes that turns into real money. Often it doesn't.

The fourth model is where most of the hype lives, and the third is where most beginners never look. That gap is your opportunity.

Web3 referral and affiliate programs compared

The short version: wallets and data tools pay the most predictable money, on-chain trading referrals pay the most when markets are busy, and integrator fees reward people who can build a simple tool. Everything below was checked on the projects' official pages and docs.

A quick note on what's missing. Older "Web3 affiliate" lists love to include Uniswap, Polygon, Chainlink, Solana and 1inch with commissions of 25–50%. I looked for affiliate programs for those names on their official sites and docs and found none, so they're not in the table. Protocols are not shops; most of them don't pay marketers directly. Where they do pay, it's through the integrator and on-chain mechanics below.

Wallets: the easiest Web3 product to recommend honestly

Wallets are the best place to start because they solve a real problem without asking anyone to bet on a price. Someone buying a hardware wallet wants to protect coins they already own, and that need doesn't vanish in a bear market.

Ledger: the classic affiliate route

Ledger runs a proper affiliate program for websites, YouTubers and creators and pays commissions in crypto; the exact rate appears in the affiliate dashboard after you're accepted. I go deeper into Ledger, Trezor and how wallet commissions compare with exchange revenue shares in the crypto affiliate comparison, so I won't repeat it all here. The one thing worth repeating: use the affiliate program for a website or channel, not Ledger's Refer-a-Friend program, which is meant for personal invites.

Tangem: a referral code with a real discount

Tangem's referral program pays 5 USDT for each wallet bought with your code, and the buyer gets 10% off. You activate it inside the Tangem app, the reward lands on your Tangem wallet's Tron address as USDT (TRC-20) about 30 days after the purchase, and there's no limit on the number of referrals.

Example, not a result: 40 wallets sold through your code would be 40 × 5 = 200 USDT. That's modest. But notice what you're really selling: a 10% discount. "Here's a code that saves you 10%" converts far better than "please use my link", because the reader gets something too. Tangem's site also mentions an affiliate program and a reseller program for businesses; if you run a site rather than share codes with friends, ask Tangem which one fits before you put the code in an article.

MetaMask and other software wallets: no affiliate program, just campaigns

MetaMask doesn't run an affiliate program. Its Rewards hub gives every user a referral code that earns bonuses in specific campaigns, and the bonus changes from campaign to campaign. MetaMask also says Season 1 of Rewards has ended, there are no concrete plans for future seasons, and there are no plans for a $MASK token. So if you see an article promising "30% recurring from MetaMask", that's fiction.

That doesn't make software wallets useless for you. Wallet setup guides are some of the most searched beginner content in crypto, and they're the natural place for a hardware wallet recommendation ("once your balance is worth protecting, move it here"). The guide earns through the hardware wallet link; the free wallet is the topic that brings the reader in. If you want the threat side of that story, I wrote about it in how hackers attack digital wallets.

Integrator fees: earning from swaps and bridges without an affiliate program

An integrator fee is a small percentage you add to every swap or bridge transfer that runs through your own widget, app or bot, and it's paid straight to your wallet by the protocol's smart contracts or API. It's the Web3 version of an affiliate commission, except you don't apply anywhere: you integrate.

Most "Web3 affiliate" guides skip this because it needs a little technical work, but less than it sounds: aggregators ship ready-made widgets you can drop into a page, right next to the guide where readers are about to act.

LI.FI: one integration for swaps and bridges across chains

LI.FI routes swaps and bridges across many chains through one API, SDK or widget. It charges users a base service fee of 0.25% per transaction, and you can add your own fee by passing a "fee" parameter with your integrator name. On EVM chains with its FeeForwarder contract, your fee goes straight to your fee wallet at execution; on chains using the older FeeCollector, fees accumulate and you withdraw them through the LI.FI portal. On Solana, Sui, Bitcoin and Stellar the fee goes to your wallet directly. LI.FI says it may keep a share of collected fees depending on the use case and volume.

Jupiter: Solana's main aggregator

Jupiter's Ultra API lets you set a referral fee between 50 and 255 basis points (0.5% to 2.55%) per swap, and Jupiter keeps 20% of your fee. You need a referral account and a referral token account for each token you want to collect fees in. Here's the subtle bit: Jupiter, not you, picks the token the fee is taken in, and if you haven't created the matching token account, the swap goes through without your fee. Start with SOL and USDC accounts (Jupiter's own docs suggest it), then add more for the tokens your users actually trade.

0x: the EVM swap API with a generous ceiling

0x's Swap API lets you set a fee of up to 1,000 basis points (10%) by default, paid to a wallet you specify, and you can even split it between several addresses. Ten percent is a ceiling, not a suggestion. Users and wallets compare quotes, and a route that's 10% worse than the next tab over gets abandoned in seconds.

What an integrator fee is worth: an example

Here's made-up example math, not a result. Say your swap widget handles $200,000 of volume in a month.

The fee you set is a pricing decision, not a commission rate. With LI.FI, for instance, a 0.2% integrator fee on top of the 0.25% service fee means a user swapping $1,000 pays about $4.50 in fees before gas and slippage. A user who checks the same route elsewhere will notice. The sweet spot is a fee low enough that your tool is still competitive, plus content good enough that people prefer to swap where they just learned how.

On-chain referral codes on decentralized trading apps

Decentralized perpetual exchanges (perps are futures contracts with no expiry date) pay referrers a share of their users' trading fees directly on-chain, and these are some of the few Web3 programs that pay in stablecoins or other real assets rather than points. The catch is that they're leveraged trading products, which is exactly the kind of thing beginners lose money on.

Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid pays referrers 10% of their referred users' fees (less any fee discount those users get) on the first $1 billion of each referral's volume, and referred users get 4% off fees on their first $25 million. To create a code you need $10,000 of your own trading volume. Rewards accrue in the assets traded and can be claimed once they exceed $1.

Hyperliquid also has builder codes, which are the integrator-fee model on a trading app: if you build a front end or trading bot, you can charge your own fee of up to 0.1% on perps and 1% on spot. Each user has to approve your maximum fee from their main wallet, and you need at least 100 USDC in perps account value. Example math: 0.05% on $2,000,000 of monthly volume through your tool would be $1,000.

dYdX

dYdX's affiliate program pays up to 15% of your referrals' taker fees, capped at 3,000 USDC per referral in a 30-day period, for as long as they keep trading. VIP affiliates, meaning influencers with a following of more than 30,000 people who pass a vetting process, can get up to 50%, capped at 10,000 USDC per referral per 30 days. Payouts are automatic, in USDC, settled every block. Your link becomes available after just $10 in trading volume. The program isn't available to people in the US, Canada, the UK or sanctioned territories.

GMX

GMX runs a tiered referral program in which traders using a code get a 5% fee discount at tier 1 and 10% at tiers 2 and 3. After a recent update on Arbitrum, affiliate rewards for any single trader drop to zero 12 months after they apply your code or once $20,000 in rewards has been paid for them, whichever comes first. So "lifetime" here really means "one year, tops".

What these referrals can pay: an example

Made-up numbers, not a result: 10 active traders who each pay $150 a month in fees generate $1,500 in fees. At Hyperliquid's 10%, that's roughly $150 a month for you. If the same traders used an app paying 30% of fees, you'd get $450. And if the market goes quiet and they trade half as much, both numbers halve. Revenue share is a bet on other people's trading activity, which is why I'd never build a site on it alone.

There's also an honest question you should ask yourself before promoting any of these: who's on the other end of your link? Leveraged products pay referrers the most because they generate the most fees, and they generate the most fees because people trade them hard. If your audience is beginners, a perps referral code is the wrong product to push. If your audience is experienced traders who already use perps, a fee discount through your code is genuinely useful to them.

Web3 data tools: Nansen's multi-level referral program

Crypto data and analytics tools are one of the most underrated corners of Web3 affiliate marketing, because they're bought by people who already have money in the market and want an edge. Nansen, an on-chain analytics platform that now also has its own trading features, has one of the most detailed referral programs in the space.

Anyone with a Nansen account can refer. You earn on three streams:

• Trading fees: 30% of your direct referrals' trading fees at the entry level, rising to 40%, 42.5%, 45% and 47.5% as your points tier goes up, plus 5% on the second level (people your referrals bring) and 2.5% on the third. Referrals earn for life, as long as they keep trading.
• Paid plans: 10% of direct referrals' subscriptions for 12 months from signup.
• API credits: 10% of direct referrals' API credit purchases for 12 months.

Payouts are in USDC, monthly, to your Nansen wallet on Solana, and the minimum claim is just $1. Trading commissions earned in one month are claimable early the next; subscription and API commissions wait an extra month so refunds can settle. Your referrals get 10% off any paid plan and a lower spot trading fee.

The detail that will quietly cost you referrals is attribution. On the web, Nansen's referral code lasts 30 days in the browser where it was clicked, and it doesn't carry across devices. The first link a user clicked wins. So a reader who clicks your link on their phone during lunch and signs up on their laptop that evening isn't yours. Tell readers to sign up on the device where they clicked, or give them your vanity code to enter manually, and choose that code carefully: Nansen says the handle can't be changed once claimed.

NFT marketplaces and quest platforms: mostly points, not commissions

NFT marketplaces and quest platforms are where Web3 "affiliate income" most often turns out to be points, access or nothing at all. That doesn't mean there's no money here, but the money usually comes from content and traffic, not from a referral dashboard.

NFT marketplaces

OpenSea's mobile app has referral codes, but what they do is let a friend skip the waitlist; OpenSea's help page doesn't mention any reward for the referrer. I didn't find a paid affiliate program at the major NFT marketplaces. If you write about NFTs, the realistic money is in guides, creator tools and the wallet a buyer needs anyway. I covered the content side in making money on NFTs with zero investment.

Quest platforms like Galxe

Galxe is a no-code quest platform that projects such as Optimism, Arbitrum and Polygon have used to run campaigns, where users complete tasks (follow, bridge, swap, hold a credential) and get loyalty points, token airdrops, NFTs or mystery-box rewards. Layer3 runs a similar quest model. The important thing to understand: quest platforms pay participants, not affiliates. Referral mechanics, where they exist, are set per campaign and usually pay in points.

So how do people make money around them? Mostly in two ways. The first is content: "how to complete this campaign" guides and Telegram channels that track live quests get steady traffic during busy seasons, and they can carry wallet and tool recommendations. The second is airdrop farming: doing quests to qualify for future token distributions, often with several wallets at once. That second method is real, and plenty of people do it, but go in with eyes open. Galxe says its quests use sybil-resistant credentials, which exist precisely to filter out one person running many wallets. Farming with multiple wallets breaks most campaigns' rules, flagged wallets get excluded, and the hours you spend are paid only if a token launches and is worth something.

Why so many Web3 referral programs disappear

Points-and-token programs are funded from a project's treasury, and when the budget or the strategy changes, they end. Brave is the classic case: it wound down its creator referral program in November 2020 after planning to distribute $1 million in BAT in 2018 and ending up distributing over $13 million. Lido's DAO voted in April 2023 to retire its Ethereum and Solana referral programs, citing financial sustainability and abuse risk. Both were big, well-known programs. Neither gave affiliates much notice.

That's why I'd treat any program paid in points or a project's own token as a bonus on top of a site that earns from something steadier, never as the foundation.

Token payouts: the risk nobody puts in the commission column

When a program pays you in a volatile token, your real commission is unknown until you sell, and in some countries the tax is calculated on the day you receive it. Stablecoin payouts (USDC, USDT) avoid most of the price problem; project tokens and points don't.

In the US, the IRS says digital assets received for services are ordinary income at their fair market value in dollars when you receive them. Here's what that means in practice, with example numbers: you receive 1,000 tokens worth $0.50 each as a commission, so you have $500 of income. If you hold and the token drops 60%, your tokens are worth $200, but the income you report is still based on $500. Other countries have their own rules, so check how yours treats crypto received for work.

A few habits keep token payouts from biting:

• Prefer programs that pay in stablecoins. Nansen and dYdX pay in USDC; Tangem pays in USDT. That's one reason they made this list ahead of points programs.
• Claim and convert on a schedule. Decide in advance: claim monthly, convert what you need for taxes immediately, and only hold what you'd be fine holding anyway. Holding commissions "until they pump" is just speculation with extra steps.
• Keep a log. Date, token, amount and dollar value on the day received. Your future self at tax time will thank you.

"Isn't Web3 just scams?" The fear that stops people, and the answer

The fear is reasonable: crypto fraud is a real and very large problem, and nobody wants their name on a link that costs a reader their savings. The answer isn't to avoid Web3; it's to promote things that reduce your readers' risk instead of adding to it.

The numbers are sobering. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded about $11.4 billion in losses involving cryptocurrency in 2025, across roughly 182,000 complaints, and crypto investment fraud alone accounted for over $7 billion.

Psychologically, two traps catch Web3 affiliates. The first is the fear above, which leads to never starting. The second is the opposite: the shiny new protocol offering 80% "for life" plus points, where the size of the reward shuts down the part of your brain that asks who's paying for it. Here's the filter I use to stay between the two:

1. Can I find the terms on the project's own site or docs? Not on a Medium post, not on a "referral codes" page. No official terms, no promotion.
2. Does the product solve a problem the reader already has? Storing coins safely, finding better swap routes, understanding on-chain data. If the pitch is "you'll make money using it", that's a red flag.
3. Who pays my commission, and from what? Trading fees and product sales are sustainable. Rewards funded by a token that only goes up if new users keep arriving are not.
4. Would I be comfortable if a reader lost money using it? If the honest answer is "they probably will", pick another product.
5. Is it available where my readers live? dYdX's exclusion of the US, Canada and the UK is typical, not unusual. Check your analytics' top countries against every program's restricted list.

And disclose your links clearly near the recommendation, never promise returns, and follow the platforms' rules and the laws of the countries your content targets. In crypto that's not paperwork, it's what keeps your site trustworthy enough to earn for years.

Red flags that a Web3 program isn't worth your name

Most bad Web3 programs announce themselves if you know what to look for. Walk away if you see any of these:

• Commission rates far above the market (say, 80–90% "for life") from a project nobody had heard of six months ago.
• Payouts only in the project's own token, with no option for stablecoins, and a token that's hard to sell.
• Rewards that require your referrals to deposit into a vault or "staking" product with a fixed promised yield.
• A dashboard but no terms. If you can't read the rules for clawbacks, caps and termination, assume they'll be used against you.
• Pressure to recruit promoters rather than users, especially with bonuses for "building a team".
• Requests to sign unfamiliar wallet transactions to "activate" your affiliate account. A referral program never needs unlimited approval over your tokens.

That last one deserves extra attention. Use a separate wallet for claiming affiliate rewards and testing products, with only what you need in it, and keep your savings on a hardware wallet that never connects to new apps. It costs nothing and turns a potential disaster into a minor annoyance.

How to start with Web3 affiliate programs: a practical order

Start with one stable product, one activity-based program and one piece of content you'd be proud to show a friend. Here's the order I'd follow:

1. Pick your audience first. Beginners need wallets and safety guides; traders want fee discounts and data tools; builders and DeFi users want bridges and swap routes. One site rarely serves all three well.
2. Start with a wallet program. A hardware wallet affiliate link (like Ledger) on a genuinely useful setup or security guide is the lowest-risk first commission in Web3.
3. Add one activity-based program that fits. For traders, a data tool such as Nansen or a perps referral. For DeFi readers, a swap or bridge widget with a modest integrator fee.
4. Write task-based content. "How to bridge USDC to Base", "how to set up a hardware wallet with MetaMask", "how to read wallet flows in an analytics tool". Task content is what people search for and what AI summaries can't fully replace, because the reader still has to do the thing.
5. Track per page. On-chain programs won't read your UTM tags, so create a separate referral code, vanity handle or integrator name per page or channel where the program allows it. Then the program's own dashboard tells you which content brings users.
6. Set your payout routine. Claim, convert what you need, log values for tax. Monthly is enough.
7. Re-check terms every few months. Web3 programs change caps, tiers and regions more often than any niche I know. GMX's 12-month cap and MetaMask's ended season both arrived as quiet updates.

Before committing time to a program, run the numbers on your own traffic with the earnings calculator, and if a program pays in tokens, convert the payout to dollars first with the commission converter so you're comparing like with like.

Web3 moves fast, and the programs worth promoting in two years may not exist yet. For the bigger picture of where the industry is heading, read my take on the trends shaping crypto. For exchanges, tax tools and instant swaps, go back to the crypto affiliate programs comparison. And before you connect your wallet to anything new, read how to protect your digital wallet.