This grant will fund the continued support of the dYdX Observatory Hub and migration of our existing MEV dashboard from its standalone web application (run by Skip) to Observatory (run by RockawayX). By migrating the dashboard to Observatory, we get the benefit of full-time support by the Rockaway team and additional functionality leveraging the existing in-depth validator data already supported by their platform. Our goal is to provide a more comprehensive overview of all validator activity, including their MEV scores coupled with geographic distribution, technical data, and participation. Overall, we think the community benefits from a single point of reference for all validator-related data.

This grant will fund the deployment and support of a dYdX Chain instance on the Observatory dashboard. Observatory is used to monitor the health of Cosmos protocols and their validator sets. Given dYdX’s migration to Cosmos, there are a few concerns regarding validators specifically, including: Will dYdX include U.S. based validators? Will validators converge in Japan to minimize latency with other exchanges and internal servers? Will validators use the same ISPs? Will validators deploying outside of the co-location region (e.g. Japan) be at a significant disadvantage? This dashboard will help the community answer these questions with in-depth data on both the chain and validator set. The grant will fund 12 month support for nodes, maintenance, and ongoing testing to ensure accurate and relevant data is presented.