TL;DR
The dYdX Community voted to launch the dYdX Grants Program. The following outlines key milestones and updates from the program’s progress.
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Financial Position: dYdX Grants received $9.2 million in funding from the community and the dYdX Ecosystem Program:
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13,114,754 DYDX from the community treasury
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1,026,902 DYDX and $789,190 USDC from the previous grants program
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To date, dYdX Grants has $3.3 million USDC and 9.1 million DYDX. In line with dYdX Grants’ commitment to maintain $5–6 million in stablecoins to ensure the operational stability of the program, the team aims to diversify more DYDX over the coming months.
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Over the past two months, the focus of the program has been twofold: evaluating existing grants for renewal and funding new initiatives to strengthen infrastructure, research, and integrations across the ecosystem.
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Since August 8th 2025, the dYdX Grants Program has renewed 5 agreements and funded 14 new grants. In total, the program has engaged with more than 15 grantees contributing to the ongoing development and growth of the dYdX ecosystem.
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The first two months have set a strong foundation for ecosystem growth. The program will continue to track milestones, measure the impact of funded initiatives, and highlight contributors who are driving forward infrastructure, research, integrations, and adoption within the dYdX ecosystem.
Financial Highlights
Existing Grants: Renewals and Impact
- Free Deposit Program (Farsight & Informal Systems)
To improve the onboarding experience for traders, the Free Deposit Program covers gas fees on deposits above USD 20 from Ethereum and other L2 chains. Over the past three months, the program enabled USD 67M in subsidized deposits, helping reduce friction for both new and existing users. - Observatory Dashboard (RockawayX)
RockawayX maintains and enhances the Observatory dashboard, a key monitoring tool for the dYdX Chain. Their work has focused on the ongoing operation of the MEV discrepancy monitoring system, the maintenance of dedicated nodes to track potential MEV activity, and the integration of MEV-related data into the Observatory newsfeed. The dashboard tracks MEV discrepancies across validators in the active set, ensuring compatibility and readiness with the launch of the Designated Proposer Set.
Observatory also continues to provide validator insights by monitoring validator performance, node locations, commission rates, missed blocks, and staking activity. Together, these efforts ensure transparency, security, and operational resilience across the network. - dYdX Data Services (Numia)
Numia as a data infrastructure provider for the dYdX ecosystem powers dashboards, APIs, and analytics consumed by developers, contributors, and community members alike. The renewed grant also introduces a new real-time $DYDX token dashboard currently under active development, with insights including token flows across chains, CEXes, and DEXes, exchange deep-dives on trader behavior, and holder dynamics and whale activity.
New Grants: Expanding the Ecosystem
- Designated Proposer Set (8 Validators)
Following the v9.0 software upgrade on August 31, 2025, which introduced designated proposers, eight validators (TTT VN, Rhino, Kingnodes, CryptoCrew, Kiln, Pro Delegators, Informal Systems, and Crosnest) received grants to operate this new mechanism. This enhancement increases network resilience, performance, and operational clarity while preserving decentralization. Since the appointment of the Designated Proposer Set on September 27, 2025, the block times have reduced to ~750ms, down 25% from 1s at the start of the month. - Order Entry Gateway Service – OEGS (Imperator)
Imperator is operating the Order Entry Gateway Service (OEGS), a load-balanced set of nodes supporting proposer performance and reliability. This strengthens the chain’s scalability and uptime for all traders. - Tokenomics & Fee Tier Research (Nethermind Research)
Nethermind Research is conducting research into long-term tokenomics and incentive design. The first phase of the research resulted in proposals to simplify fee tiers and reduce protocol-level trading rewards, streamlining incentives while keeping the system sustainable. - Partner Integration Development (CLC)
CLC is driving wallet and partner integrations, including onboarding flows for providers such as Crypto.com, enabling trading competitions. These efforts expand access and make it easier for users to join the dYdX ecosystem through their preferred platforms. - TradingView Integration (Nethermind)
Nethermind Engineering is building an integration with TradingView’s Broker REST API, enabling real-time and historical dYdX v4 market data to be visible directly within TradingView. This will significantly increase market visibility and user engagement.
Looking Ahead
The first two months of the program have set a strong foundation for scaling impact across infrastructure, research, integrations, and user adoption. As the program matures, the team will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of funded initiatives, share progress with the community, and align grants toward the long-term success of the dYdX ecosystem.
This is the beginning of a more regular cadence of updates. Future posts will include milestone tracking, measurable impact, and highlights of ecosystem contributors pushing the protocol forward.