dYdX Trading Leagues Pilot Program - Request $1M in DYDX from the Community Treasury

dYdX Chain
6

First of all, I’d like to thank you for this proposal and for the effort to explore alternative approaches to the current incentive program, which has proven to be quite inefficient so far.

In my view, the key is to identify long-term traders who can demonstrate consistent profitability, regardless of whether they trade through the API or the user interface. The incentive should not be to give them money that subsidizes their trading risk, but rather to allocate capital to them once they have shown over several months that their strategy is sustainable and profitable.

Short-term competitions, such as weekly trading leagues, tend to attract traders who take excessive risk in order to win within a limited time frame. It may be more productive to look at formats like the World Cup Championship of Futures Trading, which could serve as a useful benchmark for designing programs that reward durable performance and disciplined trading.

Ultimately, the goal should be to invest alongside these successful traders so that instead of being an expense for dYdX, this initiative could become a revenue-generating line. We’ve internally discussed a project along these lines, but the organization has found it challenging to move away from the inertia of previous, less effective decisions.