Aquarius Asset Registry and Rewards Zone Explained

The reward zone by the numbers (October 2026)

Measure	Value	Source
Daily allocation to SDEX and AMM rewards	7M AQUA (about $2,300 at $0.00033)	Aquarius docs; CoinGecko, 9 Oct 2026
Vote threshold for rewards	0.5% of all liquidity votes	Aquarius docs
Cap per market	10% of the daily allocation (700K AQUA)	Aquarius docs
ICE committed to liquidity voting	52.9B	Voting tracker, 9 Oct 2026
Markets with any votes	542	Voting tracker
Markets above 0.5% / eligible	19 / 18	Voting tracker (whitelisted_for_rewards)
Largest market's vote share	37.6% (rewards capped at 10%)	Voting tracker
AMM pools showing AQUA rewards	42 of 365	Aquarius pools API

Two numbers stand out. One market above the vote threshold was not eligible, which is the registry rule at work: it had 0.61% of votes but contained a non-approved asset. And the top market held 37.6% of votes, so most of those votes earn its LPs nothing extra under the 10% cap. For the voting mechanics in general, see ICE voting and bribes on Aquarius.

How to use this

• You provide liquidity: check that a pool is in the reward zone before relying on AQUA rewards; the pool list and aqua.network/rewards show which are.
• You vote with ICE: votes on non-approved markets still count as signals but direct no emissions. Votes on a market already above 10% add nothing to its emissions.
• You issue a token: registry approval comes first; pools and incentives come after. The process is covered below and in how to issue an asset on Stellar.
• You hold a position in a pool that may be de-listed: expect the reward APY to go to zero from the next epoch and decide whether the trading fees alone justify staying.

The Asset Registry — what it is

The Asset Registry is a governance-managed on-chain list of assets eligible for AQUA emissions and protocol-level Pool Incentives. Its stated purpose is to stop emissions going to malicious or fraudulent assets and to protect liquidity providers. Governance can approve assets, revoke them, and decide which may join incentive programmes.

The rule is strict. For a pool to earn AQUA emissions or receive Pool Incentives, every asset in it must be approved; one non-approved asset makes the whole pool ineligible. That applies to volatile, stable and multi-asset pools alike. XLM, AQUA and USDC are approved by default as foundational assets.

The Aquarius docs date the change: "Since June 2026, AQUA emissions are limited to assets whitelisted in the Asset Registry." Before then, any market that cleared the vote threshold could earn, subject to a separate rule that already excluded assets whose issuers set the AUTH_REQUIRED, AUTH_REVOCABLE or AUTH_CLAWBACK_ENABLED flags, adopted under Proposal 85 with a governance route for exceptions.

How an asset gets approved

Anyone can submit an asset listing proposal from the Asset Registry section of the Aquarius app, identifying the asset by code and issuer or by its Soroban contract address. The application asks for issuer details, holder distribution, liquidity, volume, audits, asset flags, related projects, community references, Aquarius traction and issuer commitments.

The proposal then follows the normal governance process: a seven-day discussion phase, publication into a weekly voting slot (Monday 00:00 to Sunday 23:59 UTC, one proposal per slot, booked up to six weeks ahead), and a vote with governICE. Costs are 100,000 AQUA to create, 100,000 AQUA per edit and 900,000 AQUA to publish, all sent to the AQUA issuer, which takes them out of circulation.

Two details differ from general proposals. An approved asset proposal earns no creator reward, whereas a successful general proposal returns 1.5M AQUA to its author. And only one proposal per asset can be pending at a time. To pass, the vote needs a quorum of 20% of circulating ICE, counting For, Against and Abstain, and more For than Against. A unanimous vote below quorum fails.

The reward zone and the 0.5% threshold

The reward zone is the set of markets currently earning AQUA. A market enters when it holds at least 0.5% of all upvoteICE committed to liquidity voting and all its assets are approved. At that threshold, at most 200 markets could qualify at once; on 9 October 2026, 18 did.

Inside the zone, a market's share of rewards follows its share of votes: 5% of votes earns twice what 2.5% earns. The rewards are then split between the market's AMM pools and its order book on the Stellar DEX according to the liquidity in each. AMM rewards accrue every block and must be claimed; SDEX rewards are paid hourly to market makers holding an AQUA trustline.

Allocations refresh once a day at an unpredictable time, so a new vote takes effect within a day rather than instantly. The 10% cap means a single market can earn at most 700,000 AQUA a day, and votes above the cap are not redistributed; the docs note that total daily emissions can therefore fall below 7M. For how pool types share those rewards, see Aquarius AMM explained.

How ICE voting feeds the zone

Votes come from ICE, which is AQUA locked for up to three years. Locking mints ICE at up to 10 times the AQUA locked, plus upvoteICE for market voting and governICE for proposals. Each market vote creates a claimable balance on Stellar, so allocations are public, and votes can be withdrawn at any time.

ICE melts as the unlock date approaches, so voting power declines unless a lock is extended. Holders who prefer not to vote themselves can delegate to listed delegates. Projects that want votes post voting incentives (previously called bribes) of at least 100,000 AQUA a week; Aquarius also funds protocol voting incentives from AMM trading fees. On 9 October, 29 markets carried voting incentives for the week, all paid in AQUA. Since downvoteICE was deprecated in June 2026, voting is upvote-only.

Crucially, incentives and votes do not make an asset eligible. A project can buy votes for a market containing a non-approved asset, and those votes will be counted and visible, but they will not unlock emissions. Only registry approval does that.

What happens when a pool is de-listed

Governance can remove an asset through a delisting proposal, which needs only a motivation text. Grounds listed in the docs include new risks, changed project circumstances, malicious issuer behaviour, or the asset no longer meeting community standards. Pools containing the asset lose eligibility at the start of the next reward epoch.

A de-listed pool keeps working. Swaps continue, LPs keep earning trading fees, deposits and withdrawals are unaffected, and votes on the market remain counted. What stops is AQUA emissions and eligibility for Pool Incentives. For a pool where most of the yield came from emissions, the effect on LP returns is immediate and large.

WhaleHub's own pool is an example. Our BLUB-AQUA stable pool on Aquarius has received no AQUA emissions since June 2026, the month emissions were restricted to registry assets. On 9 October 2026 the Aquarius pools API showed its gauge disabled and an AQUA rewards APY of zero, with a trading-fee APY of about 0.15%. The pool still trades, and liquidity remains in it. We note it here because it shows exactly what losing reward eligibility looks like from the inside.

How these pieces fit together

Aquarius now runs a two-key system. ICE votes decide how much of the 7M daily AQUA each market gets; the Asset Registry decides which markets may receive any. Voting incentives buy votes, not eligibility. Pool Incentives let projects pay LPs directly, but only in approved pools. The design moves the question "should this asset be subsidised at all?" from the vote market, where it could be bought, to governance, where it needs a 20% quorum.

The takeaway

If you provide liquidity on Aquarius, treat registry status as part of the risk: a pool's AQUA rewards can disappear at an epoch boundary, while its trading fees remain. If you vote, put votes where they count, on approved markets below the 10% cap. And if you issue an asset, start with the registry proposal, because no amount of voting incentives substitutes for it. The routes for earning AQUA under these rules are compared in how to earn AQUA rewards in 2026.

Sources: Aquarius documentation (Asset Registry, Aquarius voting, asset flag restrictions, reward cycle, AMM rewards, SDEX rewards, growing liquidity, voting incentives, Pool Incentives, ICE tokens, governance, using governance), read 9 October 2026; Aquarius voting tracker (voting-snapshot stats and top-volume), bribes API and pools API, 9 October 2026; CoinGecko AQUA price, 9 October 2026.