@mgg, recently, our $7.7k grant proposal to build a comprehensive volume metrics tool for traders on dYdX was rejected. As you know the reason provided was that there are already funded grants that cover these needs. We also recognize the importance of tools that provide insights into liquidations, open interest, and other crucial metrics, presented in a way that is genuinely useful for active traders.
However, after reviewing the available resources, we haven’t been able to find the specific tools you mentioned that would fulfill these requirements. As traders here at dYdX, having access to such tools is essential for us to effectively navigate the market.
Could you please provide a list of the projects and their links so that we, the traders and the community, can easily access these tools?
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Note: For any traders interested in what we are trying to build for the community at dYdX, you can see it here for Vertex. It can take a minute to load due to the data size.
It shows insights into overall market shifts, which can be filtered down to specific coins or combinations of them over any timeframe or period range up to 100. It also provides a download link to generate a shareable Twitter card with the information you select to display.
Really sorry to hear that. After reading your article, I tried to find a tool that does the same thing, but couldn’t find one. I guess the Grant team had a problem or made mistakes.
Interesting tool, thank you for sharing it. I think it would also be useful to have general statistics about the traders, such as their time on the platform, their PNL, etc.
I believe it is necessary to evaluate the impact of the different strategies within the protocol. An interesting question would be to analyze the impact that the long tail of assets, which are beginning to establish their markets, is starting to have. I think this will be one of the project’s competitive advantages, and we need to understand how to maximize all this activity.
Thanks, @Cryptoplaza! We’re glad you find the tool interesting. We could build a lot more interesting tools like this for other metrics too. Such as liquidations for example. Another vital metric for traders to see that the community still doesn’t yet have in a format useful for trading.
You might be interested to know that we’ve actually already built an MVP Trading Journal for v3, which included all statistics about traders. You can check it out here.
Unfortunately, Carl from the grants team did not see the value in such a tool or support funding an upgrade for v4. Many traders, including us, understand the importance of these analytics, but it seems this perspective isn’t always shared by the grants team.
We’ve also wondered why the team is funding projects like copy trading when we don’t even have essential statistics from a tool like the trading journal to evaluate who’s worth copying in the first place. It’s confusing, especially when traders are the core users of the platform. We’ve seen interest from other departments (like OPS) about this, but the grants team should ideally be funding these vital tools for traders through the community treasury.
There have been attempts by other teams to set up secondary grants programs to support trader-centric tools, but unfortunately, these proposals were rejected. We only requested $7,700 to pay the devs for building this tool for everyone — a small amount compared to other grants approved.
@mgg has mentioned these grants are being rejected because similar tools for traders have already been funded, so we’re looking forward to his response here to clarify and enlighten us all on what exactly has been done with the substantial funds allocated to the grants team.
This can certainly be done. Quite easily. In fact you can simply select the small tail assets and see this information instantly. For example if I want to see the volume generated by all smail tail assets on Vertex in the past 24 hours I can select the assets under $500k volume, select the 1 hour time frame, past 24 bars. Then download the Twitter (X) card like so:
Hello @CipherLabs team – the DEP is always open to discussing initiatives that support traders, and we appreciate your application and willingness to support the protocol.
As outlined in our decision response there are many factors that go into determining an approval, this can include things such as: team size, distribution and reach, and comprehensiveness of the proposal.
This is no judgement of the team behind the work but a host of critical factors.
Your application for a dashboard of funding metrics, filtering coin types, and other metrics is something that has already been achieved, being executed by existing grantees, or readily available on existing public blockchain analytics platforms.
Specifically regarding the objectives of your offering, the dYdX ecosystem has the following offerings:
It is clear from your reply that there is a fundamental lack of understanding about the utility of the tools you mentioned for dYdX perpetual traders using leverage. Neither of the tools you listed provides the insights that leverage traders need to make informed decisions. Are you aware of this? If you genuinely believe they are useful, could you please explain to the community exactly how these tools support traders using 10-20x leverage? For example, what strategy would you personally implement with either of these tools to enter a trade on BTC with 20x leverage? We’re eager to understand how you think these tools are remotely useful.
To clarify, what we have developed is focused on volume analytics, not funding metrics, and it hasn’t been achieved by the tools you have highlighted. This again shows a complete lack of understanding or even a proper evaluation of what is being done and provided to the community as a tool that genuinely helps traders.
The community is paying the grants team a significant amount of money and expects a top-tier understanding of and support for traders on dYdX. If the grants team cannot demonstrate a clear grasp of what traders actually need, it raises serious concerns about the purpose and effectiveness of the funding being allocated. We look forward to your clarification on this matter.
I understand your disappointment about the grant rejection. It’s natural to feel invested in a project that you believe would benefit the community.
While I don’t have specific numbers, it’s likely that there are more grant proposals rejected than accepted due to the high demand for funding within the dYdX ecosystem.
Despite this, we encourage you to remain engaged with our community and continue exploring opportunities within the dYdX ecosystem. New projects and initiatives that align with your vision may emerge as the space evolves.
If you’re attending any crypto events in the near future, please let me know. I’d be happy to meet in person and discuss your ideas further.
In the meantime, let’s keep building and maintain constructive conversations on dYdX’s social channels.
The amount of talented teams coming our way is incredible, lets welcome those upcoming initiatives and team - despite some disagreements, should they arise.
@charles, I appreciate your response, but as the CEO of the foundation, I believe it’s your responsibility to ensure that the grants team and all decision-makers are fully aware of the actual needs of the community, especially the traders. It’s not about the $7k grant itself; we have been both rejected and approved grants before and we certainly aren’t profiting from such a small amount — it costs us more just for development. Our primary concern is the lack of understanding displayed in the rejection, which reflects a deeper issue.
The platform is facing a decline, and it’s concerning to see this being overlooked rather than actively addressed. The growth of competing platforms should be a wake-up call for dYdX to refocus on providing valuable tools for traders. If this isn’t recognized by the leadership, it’s understandable why dYdX might be losing ground.
It may be time to consider whether a change in leadership is needed to align the platform more closely with the needs of its core users. The current trajectory is worrying, and it would benefit everyone to have a team in place that truly understands what traders require to thrive here.
In the meantime, we look forward to you explaining to the community and traders here how they can use these tools to enter trades @mgg
I’ll tell you what the problem is with all existing dashboards. They show completely inaccurate information. Not just small errors, but absolutely incorrect data. Let me give you two examples to back up my claim:
Seriously? A bunch of accounts with unrealized profit > $10M on open positions?
I’ll take the first account and check its positions through the dydx frontend.
And here it looks like a very unprofitable account before the rewards? A typical reward farming bot.
I want to note that I spoke with the creator of dydxboard in discord. They are listening to feedback and trying to figure out the reasons for the incorrect data (most likely the indexer is providing wrong information, but they can explain or fix this better themselves).
Why do such problems occur? Is it because the grants program doesn’t verify the functionality of products developed with its support, or is there not enough time to do so with such funding?
Okay, you can pay focus groups of users who test everything and provide feedback.
I went through the trouble of checking the data, but what happens when an retail user comes along, makes decisions based on absolutely incorrect information, loses money—how will that be good for the project’s image?
@charles I guess it appears that there are more urgent matters at hand for you than a company distributing tens of millions of dollars worth of community funds as incentives who is showing incorrect data as illustrated by @RealVovochka
@mgg are you on holidays? You’re the only one here getting paid by the community to work mate, and there has been plenty of time to respond and let them know how to use the tools… Surely you don’t need this long to come up with something if you have funded them as you would already know how they can be used, no?
