The dYdX Treasury SubDAO was established in September 2024 as a community-governed entity responsible for managing and optimising the dYdX Community Treasury. This update provides a 2025 year-in-review alongside key developments from December 2025. The SubDAO’s mandate covers staking, financial planning, yield generation, token buybacks, and legal structuring.
December 2025 Update
DYDX Token Update
DYDX lagged both BTC and ETH on a relative basis throughout December, while largely moving in line with its peer, HYPE.
Trading activity on the DYDX perpetual markets continued to be concentrated in the BTC-USD and ETH-USD pairs. BTC-USD remained the dominant market, generating approximately $6.78B in notional volume across 1.86M trades. While notional volume declined from $8.26 billion month-on-month, trade count increased from 1.40 million. ETH-USD followed with approximately $1.69B in notional volume across 468K trades, down from $4.21B and 867K trades in the prior month, yet still accounting for a material share of total activity. SOL-USD ranked third, recording approximately $1.51B in notional volume across 579K trades, compared with $2.89B and 983K trades in the previous period.
Buyback Programme — December Update
December recorded a new all-time high in DYDX buyback execution relative to 2025, driven by a combination of open-market purchases and OTC transactions. This increase coincided with a governance-approved structural change (Proposal #313). The decline in the DYDX price and shift in the allocation of net protocol revenue from 25% to 75% for buybacks increased the total volume of DYDX repurchased.
Open-market activity acquired 1,482,291 DYDX at an average price of $0.18694, executed across 4,209 trade orders, for a total outlay of $277,107 USDC. In addition, the programme completed an OTC transaction with the dYdX Operations SubDAO, acquiring 2,491,103 DYDX at an average price of $0.20071 for $500,000 USDC. The trade was executed entirely on-chain, preserving transparency and avoiding market impact during a period of a thinner order book.
2025 Lookback
Treasury Mandate Expansion & Staking Program Execution
Closing 2025, the Treasury subDAO successfully expanded its treasury mandate and continued the systematic execution of the validator staking program.
- Assets Under Management grew from 45 M DYDX to approximately 85.62 M DYDX, comprising the following principal holdings (excluding assets initially allocated to the staking programme):
- 6M DYDX on behalf of the Operations SubDAO (temporary delegation)
- 13.59M DYDX from the Buyback program (sitting between the buyback and the staking addresses)
- 680k DYDX to make the DYDX/USDC pair tradable onchain, on Osmosis
- Four Re-delegation Cycles were completed:
- Delegation Oversight Enhancements:
- Adjusted delegation criteria weightings per updated dYdX Foundation criteria
- Active engagement with validators to improve standards, decentralisation and uptime.
Financial Results
The Treasury SubDAO continued to optimise revenue through yield generation, active financial reporting, and performance tracking.
- Monthly run-rate
- Staking: ~$118.94k USDC
- Protocol revenue share: ~$134.99k USDC
- Cumulative totals
- Staking revenue: $1.42M
- Protocol revenue share: $1.61M
Staking and protocol revenues were allocated to operational expenses, including the MPC provider and Cayman Foundation operations, complemented by OTC buybacks to mitigate market selling pressure, and initial liquidity provisioning for the DYDX/USDC pool on Osmosis.
DYDX Buyback Program
The Treasury SubDAO initiated the DYDX Buyback Programme on 23 April to operationalise strategic token repurchases and align tokenholder incentives.
Governance proposals
- Proposals passed: #225 (12.5%), #231 (25%), #239 (OTC expansion).
- Proposal #313 introduced a revised protocol fee distribution, redirecting 75% of net protocol revenue to the onchain Buyback Account.
OTC buybacks executed by the Treasury SubDAO
- OTC buybacks (subset of total programme activity): Of the total DYDX repurchased under the Buyback Programme and reflected in the metrics below, $2.395M was executed via OTC transactions with the Operations SubDAO. These purchases were conducted using USDC onchain and structured to reduce open-market sell pressure.
- These OTC buybacks formed part of the programme’s aggregate DYDX repurchases. While the buyback programme is coordinated via the onchain Buyback Account, the OTC settlements referenced below were executed from the Staking and Treasury Revenue Share addresses, which funded the transactions.
The corresponding raw transaction hashes are provided below:- ECCBAEC901F85DE1181498B3D9EFBADDB71457BFD520E51E815CEA254229E25F
- 91989C2D295A9E5C51947D2C7D587CAA93AEDB9F69F24F73668706A6550874DC
- 9CCE222701CC1E96B16A5D3031D1920FAE4FA21B707E42D0EF279805CEE96770
- BD011C7AC935360DA05367114A7570BFA77EAD2E6D0C79DEF6088FBAB3E470CB
- 5013CE3007FD5E3ADDF9023C33BEC54FF7B8246A3C1441E55AEE36DEAC2A6C12
- 8C8ECADD002318C06B438B1397990A72F69556C24FEA22E569868C61FE3D6EDB
- 7624FDEA5EB7D11F29A63946258AC7C556493D393A9A7F53C18CDD5CE3E84AFF
- 506047BD2D8E1C92B8EF3D0CA833ED166596A4A74E87EA47D73A2BFBA322D814
Total Buyback metrics
The following table summarises the total DYDX repurchased under the programme.
DeFi Strategy (Megavault & Osmosis LP)
We advanced treasury diversification via DeFi yield strategies, continued scaling the MegaVault allocation, and seeded a USDC/DYDX liquidity pool on Osmosis.
$300K USDC was deployed to MegaVault on February 13 as a strategic yield source supporting DYDX liquidity. The position generated approximately 10% APY prior to the October 10 price regime shift and has since stabilised around ~1.68% APY as of December 2025. This allocation remains under active monitoring for potential rebalancing.
Osmosis USDC/DYDX Liquidity Provision
$400K of liquidity was provisioned to seed a new 0.05% USDC/DYDX pool on Osmosis, supporting on-chain DYDX liquidity within the Cosmos ecosystem.
Initial deployment (September 26, 2025):
• Range 1: 0.51 – 0.62 (~±10% from spot) — $125K
• Range 2: 0.45 – 0.68 (~±20% from spot) — $147K
Post–October 10 price regime rebalance (November 26, 2025):
Following position exits, inventory stood at 674,704.68 DYDX. Approximately 50% of the liquidity was redeployed as follows:
• Range 1 (~±20% from spot): ~60% of deployed liquidity, positioned between 0.199 – 0.299
• Range 2 (~±10% from spot): ~40% of deployed liquidity, positioned between 0.22
Token Allocation as of December 31st
CLC Trading League Facilitation
The Treasury SubDAO initiated the facilitation of prize funding for the CLC Trading League, a four-week pilot trading program designed to evaluate whether short-term, performance-based competitions can increase trader engagement, attract new users, and enhance liquidity on dYdX.
The Treasury SubDAO is coordinating the required DYDX transfers for prize distribution in accordance with the Trading League proposal, under which up to $1M in DYDX rewards (capped at $250K per week) is allocated to non-API traders.
Governance & Infrastructure
The Treasury SubDAO initiated governance modernisation efforts while continuing to strengthen operational resilience through foundation structuring and deeper community alignment.
- Cayman Foundation operational; Articles of Association ratified (Proposal #238)
- Board updated to reflect kpk organisational changes
- Ongoing transparency:
- Monthly Treasury Reports published
- Buyback Tracker dashboard live for community visibility
2026 GOALS
In 2026, the Treasury SubDAO will prioritise expanding its core programmes and strengthening market infrastructure. Buyback activity is planned to increase roughly threefold, consistent with the distribution framework introduced under proposal #313.
The validator staking programme will remain a focus area, with ongoing reviews to uphold fairness and adherence to established criteria.
In parallel, we’ll advance onchain liquidity management on Osmosis to improve the depth and tradability of the USDC/DYDX pair across the Cosmos ecosystem.