dYdX Ops subDAO Community Update #5

[dYdX_Ops_subDAO]

Summary

The dYdX Operations subDAO Team continues to grow. We welcomed our 7th contributor and official in-house Senior Legal Counsel and onboarded our new Head of Technology, Dimitar Petkov, who previously contributed to DOS as a Technical Project Manager. We coordinated the protocol upgrade to v8.0, performed maintenance, deployed new infrastructure and front-end improvements, and took on the role of Market Mapper Authority, reducing the revenue share to 0%.

Market Mapper

After Interchain Labs (formerly Skip Protocol) decided to step down from their role as a Market Mapper Authority, we believed it made sense for DOS to take on this role, given our involvement in managing community-owned infrastructure and the front end. This is a responsibility we are excited to assume, as it aligns with our mandate and duties. Additionally, we reduced the revenue share from 10% to 0%, meaning that neither DOS nor the Interchain Team will collect any fees for operating as a Market Mapper.

We submitted a proposal on February 4th, which was approved by the dYdX Community: Proposal #208.

Subsequently in the Proposal #2.. Skips address was removed from the Market Mapper Authority Module

Team growth

The dYdX Operations subDAO now has seven official contributors, three more than last year. We’d like to welcome:

Dimitar Petkov

You might already be familiar with Dimitar, he was one of the early contributors to DOS, initially joining as a Technical Project Manager and playing a key role in Genesis and the launch of the dYdX Chain. We are extremely proud to welcome him back as our new Head of Technology after he took a sabbatical last year.

Elvin Sababi

We are also excited to welcome our new official in-house legal counsel, Elvin Sababi.

Elvin Folkebrant Sababi is a Swedish lawyer with an LL.M. from Uppsala University in Sweden. He also completed legal studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. He began his legal career working in corporate transactions (M&A) at one of Sweden’s top law firms. Before joining the Operations subDAO, Elvin was a Junior Partner and Head of the Crypto-Asset Department at a boutique law firm. We are very happy to have Elvin on board who is already helping us to position ourselves better in various jurisdictions and legal landscapes.

Finance Update for 2024

Here you can find the financials of the subDAO for the full year of 2024.

[RealVovochka]

Hey, @dYdX_Ops_subDAO and @valentin please answer the questions about expenses in a parallel thread. One more question arises

Who authorized this and how these incentives were distributed?

[Joanna7459]

Thank you @RealVovochka for raising your concerns on your previous thread and here as well. Open, constructive, and respectful dialogue is essential for the continued health and growth of the dYdX ecosystem, and we welcome this opportunity to address these points directly and transparently. I’ll provide our response here so that readers can directly refer to the finance update linked above for context.

Travel Expenses and Budget Considerations

For a remote and globally distributed team like the dYdX Operations subDAO, meeting in person every so often really makes a difference. It helps us collaborate better, stay aligned on strategy, and build stronger connections as a team. In 2024, our travel expenses totaled $120K and covered several essential activities that directly contribute to the success of the subDAO and dYdX:

• Strategic planning workshops to align our roadmap with evolving market conditions and community expectations
• Team-building activities that strengthen relationships within our distributed team, improving collaboration and productivity
• Attendance at industry conferences and events (the locations of which are unfortunately not selected by the subDAO) to build and foster meaningful relationships with ecosystem partners, vendors, validators, and potential collaborators who can enhance the protocol’s capabilities.

While certain line items may appear substantial when viewed in isolation, our overall travel budget only represents about 2.5% of our annual operating expenses. This modest allocation enables essential face-to-face collaboration for our distributed team, as well as the activities listed above.

Indexer Costs and Imperator

For clarity on indexer expenses: Imperator accounts for exactly 26% of our total indexer costs for 2024, with the remainder primarily covering necessary infrastructure requirements and associated technical expenses. Imperator has consistently done an excellent job in their role and has proactively worked to keep AWS infrastructure costs as manageable as possible while maintaining the high level of service reliability that the platform requires.

Regarding Imperator’s token purchases and investment decisions: While their financial decisions are understandably their private business, they have permitted us to share their public blockchain addresses to provide transparency:

dydx1df9w32jcu23hzd73aq95j9uhynpsrshzg2yr5f

dydx1mwhwf9rqh64ktr8t8xnz37nhg7vvy42ea2vy9g

These public addresses clearly demonstrate that Imperator has been consistently purchasing dYdX tokens more than Hype over an extended period, including acquisitions at significantly higher price points than current market levels. This reflects their ongoing commitment to and belief in the dYdX ecosystem beyond their contractual obligations.

As a reminder, the dYdX Ops subDAO has conducted an open procurement process where multiple submissions from service providers have been taken into account. Overall, Imperator was and remains the best service provider available to operate this crucial piece of infrastructure.

Roles and Responsibilities

We’ve always maintained a complete and detailed list of our contributors and their specific roles on our website at dydxopsdao.com, so community members can easily see who’s doing what. We fully agree that having clear lines of responsibility between the different dYdX entities is key, not just for smooth operations, but also for ensuring accountability and responsible use of funds.

We actively work with all relevant parties in the ecosystem to avoid unnecessary duplication of efforts and ensure that each entity focuses on its core competencies in service of the broader ecosystem. That being said, in such a decentralized system it is impossible to operate without any overlap, but as laid out above, we are mindful of it and are focused on minimizing it as much as possible.

SubDAO Decision-Making

All salary and bonus decisions within our organization, as with all operational decisions within the mandate provided by the community, are made through votes among the directors where a majority must consent for a decision to be passed. To maintain ethical governance practices and avoid conflicts of interest, directors always abstain from voting on any matters directly concerning their own individual compensation or benefits.

We fully recognize the community’s desire and need for transparency regarding our operations and expenditures. However, individual salary and bonus information must remain private to protect personal data and maintain a healthy workplace environment. Aggregated salary expenses are provided in the finance update.

Thank you for these questions that have given us the opportunity to provide greater clarity.