Round 12 of Approvals

Grant will fund the production of dYdX themed merchandise to be sold online at cost for community members, distributed as giveaways during events and conferences, and used for promotional campaigns. The merchandise will include t-shirts, hoodies, hats, unique dYdX accessories, and lots of other products. Merchandise produced will also include Hedgies specific items, which will be tokengated to Hedgies holders only for exclusivity. No profits are generated from the merchandise, any sales are done at cost so that community members buy at the price of production only. The Merchandise will be produced in two drops, Drop #1 in 3 months and Drop #2 in 6 months, and will make use of a custom webstore built through another grant.

Grant will fund two Research papers and subsequent community proposals, Token Design for V4 Migration & Protocol Parameter Migration. Similar to the work previously done for Trading Rewards, the goal is to produce two in-depth research papers that can be used to guide the community through governance proposals to implement changes. The first paper will address the upcoming community responsibility for token migration to the new chain. The second paper will address all parameters existing on today's protocol that may or may not need to be changed and implemented for the new chain. Both papers will provide in-depth insight and be followed with governance proposals based on the lessons learned.

As part of our Academy Page project launch, ModYModX is joining as the Project Manager for the effort. In this role, the Project Manager will responsible for coordinating efforts, planning execution, identifying weaknesses and delivering the final product to the community. The role includes working with both the Grants team to identify necessary grants and the relevant Grantees to coordinate efforts.

dYdX is sponsoring the upcoming Cosmoverse event in Medellin, Colombia as a Platinum sponsor. The event is happening on September 26 - 28. The goal of the event is to bring together everyone from the Cosmos ecosystem with heavy focus on community building. With a platinum sponsorship, dYdX will have its logo placed across the event, on the website, receive a booth and a chance to speak at the event. Carl is expected to speak about dYdX and the Grants Program.

As part of the V4 migration, the community will take ownership of all risk parameters for dYdX trading system (maintenance margin, position size, etc..). This research will present a framework for the community to appropriately assess these risks and make adjustments as needed. The grant includes an initial proposal to make changes based on the framework.

Hummingbot is a popular tool used across multiple venues for systematic, market making trades in an easy to use manner. The grant will fund the building of bots that can be used by the community to easily trade on dYdX through market making strategies.