How to Provide Liquidity on Aquarius (2026 Step-by-Step)

Aquarius liquidity at a glance

Item	Value (25 Oct 2026)	Source
Pools on Aquarius	368: 276 volatile, 49 stable, 43 concentrated	Aquarius pools API
Pools paying AQUA rewards	47	Aquarius pools API
Fee tiers, volatile and concentrated	0.1%, 0.3% or 1%	Aquarius docs
Daily AQUA for SDEX and AMM rewards	7M AQUA (about $2,000)	Aquarius docs; CoinGecko
Maximum ICE boost	2.5x	Aquarius docs

What you need before you start

You need a Stellar wallet that works with Aquarius, both assets of the pool you want, a little XLM for fees and reserves, and an AQUA trustline so you can receive rewards.

• A wallet. LOBSTR, Freighter and other Stellar wallets connect to aqua.network. See our LOBSTR guide if you are starting from scratch.
• Both assets. A volatile or concentrated pool takes two; a stable pool can hold up to three. You can buy them on Aquarius itself or on the Stellar DEX. For AQUA, see how to buy AQUA.
• XLM. Stellar transactions cost a fraction of a cent, but every trustline and LP position needs a small XLM reserve.
• An AQUA trustline. Rewards are paid in AQUA; without the trustline you cannot receive them.

Step 1: choose the pool type

Aquarius runs three pool types. Volatile pools use the constant-product formula and suit any pair. Stable pools suit assets that should trade near 1:1. Concentrated pools let you put your liquidity in a price range you choose, which earns more per dollar but needs watching.

Pool type	Best for	Trade-off
Volatile (constant product)	Any two independently priced assets, such as XLM/AQUA	Simple and always active, but capital is spread thin across every price
Stable	Stablecoin pairs or wrapped versions of one asset, such as PYUSD/USDC	Very low slippage near the peg; dangerous for volatile assets, because the formula assumes the peg
Concentrated	LPs who will set and manage a price range	Much higher fees per dollar while in range; nothing while out of range

The difference shows up in the numbers. On 25 October 2026 the XLM/USDC volatile pool held about $3.29M and paid roughly 1.17% from fees plus 0.10% in AQUA rewards. The XLM/USDC concentrated pool held about $1.29M and paid roughly 6.78% from fees plus 3.83% in AQUA. The XLM/AQUA volatile pool, about $1.34M, paid 0.30% from fees and 0.46% in AQUA. These are annualised figures from the Aquarius pools API and change daily. Concentrated pools earn more because most of their liquidity sits where trades happen; concentrated liquidity on Aquarius explains the mechanics.

Step 2: check whether the pool earns AQUA

A pool earns AQUA rewards only if its market is in the reward zone: at least 0.5% of all ICE votes, and every asset approved in the Aquarius Asset Registry. Most pools are not. On 25 October 2026, 47 of 368 pools showed an AQUA rewards rate.

The pool list on aqua.network shows each pool's fee APY and rewards APY separately, and aqua.network/rewards lists the markets currently paid. A market's rewards are shared between all its AMM pools and its order book on the Stellar DEX, in proportion to the liquidity in each. One market can receive at most 10% of the daily allocation, 700,000 AQUA. The rules are in the Asset Registry and reward zone and how to vote on Aquarius.

Step 3: deposit

Open aqua.network/pools, choose the pool, select Deposit, enter the amounts and sign the transaction in your wallet. The interface fills in the second amount at the pool's current ratio and shows the rewards boost your ICE gives you before you confirm.

1. Go to aqua.network/pools and connect your wallet.
2. Filter by pool type if you want, and open the pool.
3. Choose Deposit and enter the amount of one asset; the other is calculated from the pool ratio.
4. Check the Rewards Boost value, which reflects your ICE balance and deposit size.
5. Select Deposit and sign. Your LP shares appear under My Liquidity.

For a concentrated pool, you also set a price range. The interface offers presets, each relative to the current price: Tight (0.3% either side, for stable pairs), Medium (20% either side), Wide (half to double the price), One-sided up or down, and Full range, which behaves like a volatile pool. You can also type a custom range or drag the handles on the liquidity chart.

One warning from the Aquarius docs: if you are the first depositor in an empty pool, your deposit sets its exchange rate. Start small and check the market price elsewhere first.

Step 4: claim rewards

AQUA rewards build up every block but are not sent to you. Claim them in the My Liquidity tab or in My Aquarius, one pool at a time or in bulk. A claim can include AQUA rewards, any Pool Incentives, and, for concentrated positions, the fees the position earned.

Trading fees in volatile and stable pools are different: they are added to the pool, so they show up in the value of your LP shares and come back to you when you withdraw. Some pools also carry Pool Incentives, extra rewards in another token funded by a project. They appear in the pool's APY and are claimed the same way.

Step 5: boost your rewards with ICE

If you hold ICE, your AQUA rewards in a pool are multiplied by up to 2.5. The full boost applies when your share of all ICE is at least your share of the pool. A larger deposit with the same ICE lowers the boost toward 1x.

Aquarius uses the same working-balance formula as Curve: boost = min(0.4 × deposit + 0.6 × pool_liquidity × your_ICE / total_ICE, deposit) / (0.4 × deposit). The docs give a worked example with 50 billion ICE in total: 5 million ICE (0.01%) and 0.01% of a pool gives the full 2.5x, so a 10% rewards APY becomes 25%; doubling the deposit to 0.02% with the same ICE drops the boost to 1.75x. The boost is recalculated hourly and refreshed when you claim. It applies to AQUA rewards only, not fees. To get ICE, see how to get ICE.

Withdrawing

There is no lock-up. Open the pool or My Liquidity, choose Withdraw, pick the percentage of your shares and confirm. Shares are burned and you receive your part of each asset at the current ratio, which will differ from what you put in if the price moved. A concentrated position that is out of range comes back entirely in one asset. Claim pending rewards before or after; they are tracked separately.

The risks

• Impermanent loss. If the two prices diverge, withdrawing can return less than holding would have. Fees and rewards may or may not make up for it. Stable pools mostly avoid it while the peg holds; concentrated positions magnify it within their range. See impermanent loss explained.
• Out-of-range positions. A concentrated position earns no fees and no rewards while the price is outside its range. The Aquarius docs advise withdrawing and re-depositing with a new range.
• Reward changes. Rewards follow votes, which shift daily. A market can drop out of the reward zone, and if an asset is removed from the Asset Registry its pools stop earning AQUA.
• AQUA's price. Rewards are paid in AQUA. At $0.000287 on 25 October 2026, the whole 7M AQUA daily allocation was worth about $2,000, so a high percentage can mean small dollars.
• Unsupported tokens. Fee-on-transfer, rebasing and deflationary tokens do not work in Aquarius pools, and a token that migrates to a new contract leaves the pool behind.
• Contract risk. The pools are Soroban smart contracts. Audits reduce risk but do not remove it; see DeFi risks.

If you would rather not manage it

Providing liquidity means picking pools, watching ranges and claiming. If you hold AQUA and would rather earn from Aquarius without running positions, staking it with a protocol that pools ICE is the other route. WhaleHub, which publishes this blog, does that: stake AQUA, receive BLUB, and earn a share of the AQUA its pooled ICE votes bring in. BLUB is a floating token with its own market price, and unstaking has a 10-day cooldown. See how to stake AQUA, and compare routes in how to earn AQUA rewards.