dYdX Surge Rewards Program Renewal

dYdX Chain
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Simple Summary

This proposal seeks community approval to renew and extend the dYdX Surge Rewards Program, a trading rewards initiative designed to incentivize sustained and organic trading activity on dYdX. The proposed program will operate for six months starting January 1, 2026, and will use a streamlined, fee-rebate-based rewards mechanism that has proven effective in prior Surge seasons.

CryptoLearningClub (CLC) will serve as a contributing team responsible for program operations, including execution, reward calculations, and performance reporting, with support from dYdX Labs.

Abstract

dYdX Surge has historically been an effective mechanism for supporting trading activity and liquidity on the protocol through transparent and predictable incentives. Previous Surge seasons demonstrated that simplified fee-rebate-driven reward mechanisms deliver meaningful outcomes while remaining operationally sustainable for the protocol.

Building on these learnings, this proposal outlines a renewed iteration of the dYdX Surge Rewards Program that maintains the familiar structure while emphasizing long-term sustainability and clarity in execution. CLC has been provided a grant to manage incentive programs for dYdX and will serve as the contributing team responsible for coordinating reward calculations, reporting, and seasonal distribution proposals, coordinating with dYdX Labs for technical support and implementation guidance.

Motivation

The core rationale for continuing dYdX Surge is consistent with the program’s historical success: to incentivize active traders, reinforce liquidity, and support healthy trading volume on dYdX.

Previous Surge seasons have validated that fee-based rebates effectively align incentives by directly rewarding meaningful trading activity without introducing unnecessary complexity. Continuing this proven design helps preserve user familiarity, reduces operational overhead, and supports predictable reward mechanics throughout the program’s duration.

Specification

The program will retain the dYdX Surge brand to preserve familiarity and continuity for existing users. Rewards will be distributed in the form of trading fee rebates and other rewards, consistent with previous Surge seasons. This mechanism has demonstrated strong user comprehension and operational reliability. Any adjustments to the rewards model for future seasons will be communicated transparently to the community in advance.

The proposed duration of the program is six months, starting on January 1, 2026, and divided into six discrete monthly seasons. A total budget of $6M in DYDX is requested from the Community Treasury to be earmarked for the program. Importantly, funds will remain in the Community Treasury and will be distributed on a monthly basis, subject to governance approval.

Users will continue to be able to track their estimated rewards through the existing leaderboard on the dYdX frontend. CLC, with support from dYdX Labs, will manage reward calculations and submit a detailed distribution proposal at the conclusion of each season.

This proposal serves as a temperature check to approve the overall program framework, with individual seasonal distributions handled separately.

Next Steps

We would like to invite feedback from the community on the proposed structure, budget, and duration of dYdX Surge. Based on community discussion and input, a text proposal to approve the program and the budget is planned to be submitted by December 22, 2025.

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We are in support of this because Surge has already proven effective at growing trading volume and liquidity on dYdX through simple, transparent fee rebates that traders understand and actively respond to. Extending the program with a clear six‑month budget, monthly governance-gated distributions, and experienced operators like CLC and dYdX Labs keeps incentives aligned with community interests.

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can we get a breakdown of how much DYDX are actually left in the Community Treasury

per Mintscan’s treasury page we have $6.8M left

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if that’s accurate, what happens after six months? How are we planning on funding future initiatives?

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It will be only a fee rebate or also and trading rewards as was in all previous seasons except the last one ?

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We’ve submitted proposal-331.
Don’t miss the chance to vote!

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I agree with that, Surge should be renewal to attrack more traders and also the trading fee rebate is what i like most. Also allocating reward to traders depend on Trading Volume was a great choice and it really encourage tradrs to do more trade in DYDX.

So i would suggest to re-enable the old surge reward method (positive fees and positive volume based reward)

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Just a couple of highlights from previous seasons :slight_smile:

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And all of this is sent to the order book instantly. Let’s make the dYdX token worth nothing. There’s not much left, we can finish it in six months imo

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— Limit Surge rewards to fees paid
— Add some rules to support wow/mom/yoy consistency and staking
— Add some rules to support trading beyond top-10 assets

All we need.

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I appreciate the continued effort to renew and stabilize the dYdX Surge Rewards Program, as well as the focus on long-term sustainability and clarity. However, I would like to strongly advocate for bringing back explicit $1M UI trader rewards like Surge 7, 8 as part of the program.

Historically, UI-based trader incentives played an important role in:

  • Encouraging organic, non-incentive-farming activity

  • Supporting retail and discretionary traders who actively use the dYdX interface

  • Improving user retention and daily engagement on the frontend

  • Aligning rewards with real user experience rather than purely volume-optimized strategies

Since the removal or reduction of UI trader–specific rewards, participation from smaller but consistent traders has noticeably declined, and incentives have become increasingly skewed toward whale traders. This risks reducing diversity in the trader base and weakening the feedback loop between product UX improvements and actual user behavior.

Reintroducing UI trader rewards—whether as a dedicated allocation, multiplier, or capped rebate—would:

  • Better balance incentives between professional and retail participants

  • Reward genuine usage of the dYdX product

  • Strengthen the ecosystem by supporting long-term, sticky users

I encourage the team to consider reinstating UI trader rewards in future Surge seasons,

Thank you for considering this feedback and for continuing to engage with the community.

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How do you filter UI traders with millions in volume who are using automation?

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For automation trading, they need to first generate API key from DYDX and then using that for their trading. This can easily be detected and monitored by DYDX team.

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When UI traders trade millions in volume, they are exposed to spread, slippage and even latency from their manual actions. This, in return, brings benefit to DYDX liquidity providers (LP) and market maker as the spread and slippage UI traders paying is one of their source of revenue.

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From what I’ve seen accounts that get most rewards are using UI Automation tools. Sorry for being honest, but if Surge UI rewards will be re-introduced I’ll use UI automation as well.

That is why I suggest to not threat differently API users (like me) and UI users.

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The best it would be trading rewards for everyone and UI and API traders because both they generate volume and fees. The fee based distribution(positive fees paid) it was the most fair system , because no matter the way the fees are paid. Also it would be better the rewards to be in USDC and not dydx token for many reasons , first for not oversell after reward and second because dydx price is moving and you never receive what should be(not even the fee rebates).Finally the 30 day TWAP its a completely mistake because even the team when choose to ask from the treasure for tokens they always choose a 7 day TWAP , so why the rewards must be in a 30 day that its not fair? So the team has to think all the above for the new season