Can you farm Binance Launchpool with USDC or USD1? Stablecoin pools vs the BNB pool
The accepted coins change every round and the title tells you which. What matters more: stablecoins have to be locked by hand, every pool keeps its own shares and caps, and stablecoin pools sit outside HODLer Airdrops.
“Users will be able to lock their BNB, USDC, U, and USD1 to receive OPN airdrops over 2 days.”
“Users who have locked their BNB in Flexible Products and Locked Products, including Binance BNB Simple Earn” are enrolled automatically. The first line says which coins; the second says which holdings count without you doing anything. Checked against the English announcement in October 2026.
Sometimes, and the list of accepted coins changes from round to round. Round 72, Opinion (OPN), in March 2026, took BNB, USDC, U and USD1. Round 65, Nillion (NIL), a year earlier, took BNB, FDUSD and USDC. Round 62, Vana (VANA), took only BNB and FDUSD. The coins for a given round are spelled out at the end of the announcement title.
Three things set the stablecoin pools apart from the BNB pool. You have to lock stablecoins in yourself, because the announcement only enrolls BNB held in Earn products automatically. Each pool is a separate pot with its own share calculation and its own hourly cap. And nothing you lock in a stablecoin pool counts toward HODLer Airdrops or Megadrop. The rest of this page walks through the Round 72 announcement line by line.
Which coins a round accepts: the last words of the title
Launchpool announcements follow a fixed pattern: "Introducing X on Binance Launchpool! Farm X by Locking A, B and C." Every coin after "Locking" has its own pool. If a coin is not in that list, there is no pool for it this round, whatever the previous round looked like.
Three rounds where the original announcement is still readable:
| Round | Farming opened | Coins you could lock |
|---|---|---|
| 62 · Vana (VANA) | 14 Dec 2024 | BNB, FDUSD |
| 65 · Nillion (NIL) | 21 Mar 2025 | BNB, FDUSD, USDC |
| 72 · Opinion (OPN) | 3 Mar 2026 | BNB, USDC, U, USD1 |
FDUSD dropped out by Round 72; U and USD1 came in. No rule says the next round will keep the same four, so whether your FDUSD can farm the next project is a question only the next announcement answers. The other fields in an announcement (dates, caps, excluded regions) are read the same way as in our guide to reading a HODLer airdrop notice.
Does USDC in Simple Earn join automatically?
Not according to the announcement. The automatic-enrollment line in Round 72 reads: "Users who have locked their BNB in Flexible Products and Locked Products, including Binance BNB Simple Earn". The subject of that sentence is BNB. Stablecoins are not mentioned.
So USDC sitting in a Flexible product is not farming anything. To join the USDC pool you open the Launchpool page, pick that pool and lock the coins in it yourself.
The same section carves out one BNB exception: Flexible BNB that is pledged as collateral for Binance Loans (Flexible Rate) earns no Launchpool rewards either.
If you hold BNB and USDC in Earn, the Launchpool page will show a BNB share for you from the first hour. That says nothing about USDC. Check each pool for an amount you actually locked once farming opens; it is quicker than reconciling afterwards.
How Round 72 split the rewards, and the hourly caps
The total was 20,000,000 OPN, divided in advance:
| Pool | Reward | Share of total | Hourly cap per user |
|---|---|---|---|
| BNB | 16,000,000 OPN | 80% | 33,333 OPN |
| USDC | 2,000,000 OPN | 10% | 4,166 OPN |
| U | 1,000,000 OPN | 5% | 2,083 OPN |
| USD1 | 1,000,000 OPN | 5% | 2,083 OPN |
A small slice of the rewards does not mean a small payout for you. Each pool calculates shares on its own: your cut of the USDC pool is your locked USDC over all USDC locked in that pool, with no reference to the BNB pool at all. A smaller pot may also attract less money, so per dollar it can come out better or worse than the BNB pool. You only find out from each pool's live total on the Launchpool page. The pool share estimator takes one pool at a time.
The caps are worth a quick division. Round 72 ran for 48 hours, so the USDC pool released about 41,667 OPN an hour against a cap of 4,166. The BNB pool released about 333,333 an hour against 33,333, and the U and USD1 pools 20,833 against 2,083. In every pool, then, one account could take at most about a tenth of that hour's release. That ratio is our arithmetic on this round's numbers. The announcement never says "a tenth", and the next round may set its caps differently.
Settlement is the same for all four pools: balances are snapshotted "multiple times at any point of time each hour", your average for the hour sets your share, rewards update hourly and can be claimed to Spot whenever you like. Daily quotas follow the UTC day. The hour-by-hour logic, with a diagram, is in how Launchpool splits the tokens.
One pool per coin, but you can move between pools
"Tokens can only be locked in one pool at a time." USDC locked in the OPN USDC pool cannot farm a second project simultaneously.
Moving is allowed. Users "will be able to unlock their funds at any time with no delay and participate in any other available Launchpools immediately". The coins stop counting for the old pool from the moment you unlock them, and start counting for the new one from the moment they are locked there.
Round 72 also carried a clause that applied only to USD1: "USD1 locked in Launchpool will not be counted as holding a position for the WLFI airdrop event during the locked period." If you were holding USD1 for that event, locking it here meant two days off the books over there. Clauses like this do not appear in every round; when they do, they tend to sit near the end of the announcement.
When a pool ends, locked tokens and any unclaimed rewards go back to your Spot Account automatically.
Stablecoin pools do not count for HODLer Airdrops or Megadrop
Binance's weekly Earn Arena announcements from September 2026 (we read the Chinese versions) all end with the same three sentences: BNB in Flexible and Locked products joins Launchpool automatically; BNB in Locked products accumulates Megadrop points; users who subscribe BNB to Flexible or Locked products receive HODLer Airdrops. All three are about BNB.
Money in a stablecoin pool therefore earns one thing: that round's Launchpool reward. The same money held as BNB in Earn would be present on all three lines, at the price of carrying BNB's own price swings. Neither choice is free. Which BNB product counts for which line is laid out in where to keep your BNB, and which balances a HODLer snapshot picks up is in HODLer snapshots.
Who can join a stablecoin pool
Eligibility is the same for every pool. Round 72 required KYC "to Binance's satisfaction" and excluded residents of the countries listed in the announcement, among them the United States, Japan, Canada and the Netherlands. Binance may also cancel rewards for fraud or abuse.
The regional list for Launchpool is not always identical to the one for HODLer Airdrops; how regional limits work breaks it down by line.
One practical point if you do not already hold the round's stablecoin: swapping into U or USD1 for a two-day pool costs a spread and a fee going in, and the same again if you swap back afterwards. That comes out of whatever the pool pays you. The real-cost breakdown shows how to put a number on it.
Questions people ask
Can I still farm Launchpool with FDUSD?
Only if the round's announcement lists it. Round 65 (NIL) accepted FDUSD; Round 72 (OPN) did not, and took USDC, U and USD1 instead. The coins after “Locking” in the title are every pool the round has.
Can I be in the USDC pool and the BNB pool at once?
Yes, with different coins. The restriction is on the same tokens: they can only be locked in one pool at a time. The two pools keep separate shares and separate hourly caps.
Can I lose stablecoins by locking them in Launchpool?
The USDC you lock stays USDC; the amount does not shrink, you can unlock at any time, and it returns to Spot when the pool ends. What varies is the value of the new token you receive, plus any spread and fees paid to swap into the stablecoin.
Why did I get less from the USDC pool than someone else?
Your share is your average locked amount for each hour against the pool total, so hours before you locked, or after you unlocked, count for less. There is also a per-user hourly cap: 4,166 OPN in Round 72's USDC pool, however much you lock.