TL;DR
The following outlines key milestones and updates from the program’s progress.
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As of 7 January 2026, dYdX Grants holds $3 million in USDC and 5.8 million DYDX. Through a rigorous approach to reviewing existing grants and renewing or terminating agreements, the program has achieved meaningful cost efficiencies, preserving capital amid a subdued token price environment.
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Through disciplined grant sizing, renewal renegotiations, and the termination of low-impact initiatives, the current program iteration has reduced ecosystem grant expenditure by approximately $220,000 per month, delivering an estimated $3.7 million in overall annual savings compared to the previous program.
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During Q4 2025, the program remained focused on reviewing existing grants for renewal or discontinuation, while selectively funding new initiatives aimed at strengthening core infrastructure, developer tooling, and ecosystem growth.
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In Q4 2025, dYdX Grants approved 10 new grants, executed 34 agreements, and onboarded 26 grantees. Since the program’s launch in August 2025, more than 50 grant contracts have been executed, with 40+ active grantees contributing across infrastructure, research, and integrations supporting the dYdX ecosystem.
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Looking ahead to 2026, the Grants Program will prioritize initiatives that accelerate dYdX adoption through improved tooling, efficient infrastructure, and high-impact research, while expanding the protocol’s utility by funding novel products such as AI agents, yield-generating products, and prediction markets, among other emerging use cases.
Financial Highlights
Existing Grants: Renewals and Impact
dYdX Trading Arena Maintenance and Incentives Program Management (CLC)
The Grants Program funded CLC ($14,000 monthly) to manage and operate the dYdX Trading Arena, ensuring its reliability, performance, and uptime during trading competitions. CLC oversees the full lifecycle of trading competitions, including onboarding and coordinating KOLs, supervising competition execution, and managing reward distribution. Competitions are conducted both on the dYdX Trading Arena and in collaboration with ecosystem partners such as Crypto.com and ThorWallet, expanding participation and reach across the ecosystem. In addition to competitions, CLC supports and operates several community approved incentive programs, including the dYdX Trading League and the Loss Rebate Program. Recently, CLC was also appointed through governance to oversee the dYdX Surge Program, consolidating operational ownership of trader-facing incentives under a single contributor.
The Grants Program renewed support for the operation of RPC infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific and European regions, including the provisioning and maintenance of dedicated JSON-RPC endpoints. These RPC nodes support critical infrastructure for the dYdX Chain through operating dedicated full-nodes of dYdX Chain, Solana, Base, and Ethereum, ensuring reliable access for users, developers, and integrations. As part of the renewal, the RPC footprint was optimized by reducing redundancy while maintaining performance and reliability standards. This adjustment resulted in approximately - $20,000 per month in cost savings for the Grants Program, improving capital efficiency without compromising operational stability.
New Grants: Expanding the Ecosystem
Kingnodes was funded ($6,000 monthly) to operate the Order Entry Gateway Service (OEGS) on bare metal infrastructure, providing a load-balanced set of high-performance nodes that support low-latency order entry for traders. The previous OEGS deployment was hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), costing approximately $35,000 per month. Following an evaluation by the Grants Program, OEGS was migrated to bare metal servers, reducing operating costs to $6,000 per month and generating over $360,000 in annual savings. Since deployment, the bare metal OEGS operated by Kingnodes has consistently demonstrated best-in-class uptime and low latency, strengthening the performance and reliability for traders.
Validator Responsiveness Grant (20 Validators)
The community approved to increase the revenue allocated towards the Buy & Stake program on 13 November 2025, which reduced the share towards staking to 15%. The Grants Program introduced a temporary Validator Responsiveness Grant. Under this program, eligible dYdX Chain validators can receive up to $1,000 per month, subject to meeting defined operational and service-level requirements (SLAs). These requirements include metrics such as missed block rates, response times, and other performance indicators, which are monitored on an ongoing basis to determine payout eligibility. To date, the Grants Program has onboarded 20 validators who have opted into the program.
dYdX Arbitrage Scanner Integration (ArbitrageScan Developers)
ArbitrageScan Developers were funded to provide ongoing support, maintenance, and operational continuity for the dYdX Chain integration within the Arbitrage Scanner. This offers traders access to dYdX’s funding rates through the Funding Rates dashboard. Meanwhile, the Perpetuals Screener module provides real-time detection of arbitrage opportunities for traders.
Looking Ahead
Entering 2026, the dYdX Grants Program will continue prioritizing initiatives that accelerate protocol adoption through improved tooling, efficient infrastructure, and high-impact research. Future funding areas include novel products and use cases such as AI agents, yield-generating strategies, and prediction markets, alongside continued support for core ecosystem infrastructure.
We extend our appreciation to ecosystem contributors, partners, and community members for their continued diligence and collaboration. The dYdX ecosystem benefits from a deep bench of technical and operational expertise thanks to you, and we look forward to building on this foundation in 2026 and beyond.