Today, Chainlink announced Chainlink Rewards Season 1 – the next iteration of its community engagement and rewards program which enables Chainlink Build projects to make their tokens claimable by Chainlink ecosystem participants, including eligible LINK stakers. Season 1 expands on the pilot stage of Chainlink Rewards, Season Genesis, which launched last May with Space and Time.
Season 1 will introduce a more advanced engagement and claiming mechanism and feature nine Build projects: Dolomite, Space and Time, XSwap, Brickken, Folks Finance, Mind Network, Suku, Truf Network by Truflation, and bitsCrunch.
A key pillar of Chainlink Economics 2.0 established in 2022, the Build program now fosters more than 90 promising early-stage startups and established projects in Chainlink’s ecosystem. Participants receive enhanced access to essential Chainlink infrastructure, new product alpha and beta releases, and technical support, in exchange for paying fees that incentivize Chainlink service providers, boost the network’s cryptoeconomic security, and advance the web3 industry.
Season 1 introduces Cubes – a non-transferable, non-monetary unit of account, similar to credit card points or airline miles, that can be redeemed for token rewards. Eligible LINK stakers will receive an amount of Cubes related to their historical participation in Chainlink Staking v0.1 and v0.2, according to a snapshot taken November 3, 2025.
On November 11, 2025, eligible LINK stakers can visit rewards.chain.link to view their Cubes balance and begin allocating Cubes to projects. Participants must complete a quiz about a project before allocating Cubes to that project and may allocate, re-allocate, or un-allocate Cubes across projects at any time, in any fashion, without transaction fees, until December 9, 2025, when the Allocation Period ends and a final snapshot of Cubes allocations is taken.
December 16, 2025 initiates a 90-day unlock period during which tokens become claimable in a linear fashion. The number of tokens a participant can claim from a Build project is proportional to their share of the total Cubes allocated to that project.
Participants may trigger an optional Early Unlock to claim a portion of their still-locked tokens early while forfeiting the rest. Forfeited tokens will be redistributed to a Loyalty Pool, where they will become claimable by participants who did not Early Unlock at the end of the unlock period.
Designed to strengthen the connection between the Chainlink community and Build projects, Rewards Season 1 empowers eligible LINK stakers to engage directly with Build projects through a more interactive, self-directed, choice-driven, and rewarding experience.
To learn more about Chainlink Rewards Season 1 and participating projects, read the official blog post.