Community Update -- January 2025

Quick Updates

• Following governance approval, Polkachu and Lemma Solutions will be joining us as Trustees to the dYdX Ecosystem Development Trust. Felix and Abra will be stepping down as Trustees.
• Seven new grants were approved with a total of $834,000 in funding.
• We are supporting the integration of the dYdX Chain among important platforms like Fireblocks and TradingView
• Launching a trading competition platform for community-driven contests
• New initiative to support the creation of dYdX-related quantitative social media reports

New Grants

Below, we highlight a few of our recent grant approvals. More detailed information and a full list of approved grants can be found here.

As a reminder, the program allocates funding between two categories, Strategic Initiatives and Community Initiatives. Doing so improves the program’s efficiency and allows for more contributors, each with a focus on specific areas of development. Community initiatives focus on projects that grow the dYdX ecosystem and community. Strategic initiatives target larger scale projects that contribute to the development, growth, and improvement of the protocol.

Strategic Initiatives

dYdX Chain Support – Fireblocks

Fireblocks is the leading institutional wallet provider, used as the primary wallet among all the largest institutions in the space. Market makers, institutional funds, exchanges, settlement platforms and more all use Fireblocks as their primary settlement platform. By continuing to support the dYdX Chain, we ensure that institutions gain access to the protocol within their preferred settlement and custodial environment. This improves adoption and usability of the dYdX chain among institutions. Support for the dYdX Chain includes custodying the DYDX token, transferring assets on the dYdX Chain, and interacting with the dYdX platform through Fireblocks. Developers can execute more sophisticated interactions with dYdX within Fireblocks using custom transaction calls.

dYdX Chain Market Data Integration – TradingView

This grant will fund the support of dYdX market price feeds on the TradingView platform. TradingView is the leading provider of market price feeds, which traders use to monitor market activity and construct trading strategies. The platform is popular among both institutional firms and retail traders alike. With this support, TradingView will integrate with the dYdX Chain to build support for all new market feeds launched on the dYdX protocol.

Trading Competition Board – CryptoLearningClub

This grant will fund the development and maintenance of a dYdX trading competition platform to be used by KOLs and community leaders for promotional purposes. Trading competitions are among the most popular methods of attracting new users to a trading venue. By offering users rewards for their participation and trading profits, we are hoping to increase user onboarding and overall promotional awareness of the dYdX exchange.

Data Services – Numia

This grant will fund the maintenance and expansion of our existing data services with Numia, the leading provider for all dYdX protocol related data. Numia is being used today across all stakeholders and contributors of the dYdX protocol, including core developers, foundation members, community contributors, and hobbyists. Data indexed through Numia is consumed through a few different methods, including BigQuery tables, the Numia API, and the Numia-run Lenses dashboard.

Community Initiatives

ETHOxford Hackathon – HomeDAO

Organized by Oxford graduates with deep blockchain ecosystem experience, ETH Oxford is a 500-person hackathon offering dYdX a strategic opportunity to engage with highly skilled builders from across Europe. The organizing team of HomeDAO has a proven track record of success, including incubating 9 companies now collectively worth $1.3 billion.

Project Updates

Below, we share updates from ongoing projects, including milestones achieved and completed deliverables.

Market Mapper

Following their transition to the ICF, Skip is no longer in a position to maintain their role as the dYdX Market Mapper. As a reminder, the Market Mapper is responsible for maintaining liquidity, reference prices, and meta data of existing markets as well as preloading and preconfiguring new markets safely on the Chain to support new permissionless market listings. The role of Market Mapper is assigned via governance, and was always intended to be interchangeable among qualified teams. We are now in the process of finding a new team to maintain the role.

MEV Committee

The existing MEV Committee, renewed six months ago, is completing its final month in January. As a reminder, the MEV Committee exists to monitor validator behavior and on-chain activity on behalf of the community such that any possible malicious behavior could be identified efficiently. We are thrilled to see another successful term filled with ongoing monitoring and reporting of relevant on-chain activity and validator performances. With the current term coming to an end, we expect to renew the Committee for another six months given their impact to the community.

dYdX Merch Renewal

The dYdX Merch project, funded to support the production and distribution of dYdX-related products, has been renewed for an additional six months following another productive term. The Toyoji team continues to produce high quality, fun products that are used across events and competitions to grow the dYdX community. The renewal will include new products and the continued distribution of goods, which serve as both a reward mechanism and growth channel for the community.

New Initiatives

Below, we highlight new initiatives published that are open for applications. These RFPs (request for proposal) invite contributors to apply for specific projects and ideas that we think could have a positive impact on the protocol.

dYdX Data Insights Creator

We’re looking for a talented content creator to deliver sharp, insightful analysis of dYdX trading activity. Your mission: transform raw market data into concise, impactful posts that capture trends, market activity, and user behavior.

Reports should be crafted for easy sharing – think X post that packs a punch.Topics will center on quantitative analysis of dYdX markets, with creative freedom to explore what’s most compelling. For inspiration, check out the work of Stefan Schlamp and others that cover quantitative data insights.

We’re starting with a grant for a series of 10 posts spotlighting recent dYdX market activity and trends. Based on performance and overall outcomes, this opportunity could extend into a broader collaboration.

Operational Updates

Financials

Balance

DYDX: 1,173,481.98

USDC: 4,920,533.00

Total USDC Balance (at current DYDX price): $6,387,385.48

Payables

Outstanding Funding Approved: $2,485,573.09

Outstanding Operational Budget: $1,239,000

Total Budget Remaining: $2,662,812.38

Expenses

Operational expenses (databases, hosting, admin, etc..): $1,991.41

Trust Amendments

Following governance approval, Felix Lutsch and Abra Tusz will be replaced by Polkachu and Lemma Solutions as Trustees to the dYdX Ecosystem Development Trust. We are in the process of conducting the legal changes to update the Trust.

‍