What is the difference between an opportunity and a campaign?
TL;DR: A campaign is the incentive program created by a protocol, while an opportunity is the specific onchain action users must perform to earn rewards.
Understanding the distinction between opportunities and campaigns is fundamental to how Merkl operates.
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Campaign: An individual incentive program created by a campaign creator with specific parameters including an amount of rewards to distribute, a duration, eligibility criteria, etc. Each campaign targets a particular onchain behavior (e.g., providing liquidity in a pool, holding a token, lending/borrowing). This targeted behavior represents an opportunity.
- Opportunity: A specific asset (e.g., pool, vault) and its associated action (e.g., depositing liquidity, borrowing assets) that can be incentivized. Example: Lend USDT on Aave.
An opportunity can exist without any reward campaigns (e.g., Lend USDT on Aave exists independently of Merkl). However, a campaign cannot exist without an opportunity.

Example: Lend USDT on Aave is an opportunity that may have multiple active campaigns offering different rewards. A user could earn USDT incentives deployed by Tether to reward stablecoin users, but also earn AAVE incentives deployed by Aave to boost the liquidity of the protocol.