On March 21st, the dYdX Foundation hosted a discussion on Discord regarding general updates, current governance proposals, and an Epoch 7 review. The discussion was followed by a community hangout and AMA with the dYdX Trading team.

A redacted transcript is available below:

James (dYdX Foundation): Welcome everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Thanks for tuning into this AMA and Epoch 7 review. We are excited to keep these up and we're all aiming to become more transparent and open with our thoughts pertaining to everything $DYDX. Firstly, I'd like to just give a quick shout-out here to a small group of people, some of whom are in this space today, who used their weekend and spent time over the past couple of weeks to help users on the iOS beta launch. These are members of the community who have functioned as stewards for dYdX. Thanks to @MB, @MX, @Oleksandr, @lingebar3134, and @Yancy, all of whom are in the audience today. Let's just start with a few housekeeping rules. Please keep questions posted in Discord.

This will be monitored throughout, and the team will do their best to answer them. So please keep questions in the thread that states Epoch 7 review and AMA, although we'll keep an eye out for those that pop up elsewhere. After the Epoch review, what we'll do is we'll open up the stage for an AMA. Please just request to speak here and we'll invite you up. If you are invited, just please refrain from any price discussion, this will not be answered or tolerated. Doing so will result in you getting kicked from the stage and banned from our Discord. For all the newcomers that have arrived over the past week or two, just please adhere to this. Please listen for existing questions before you post yours to ensure it has not already been asked. When you are on the stage, please only ask one question.

In terms of other members of the community asking their questions, please stay on topic. Off-topic discussions not related to $DYDX or the dYdX foundation will be monitored. So here today, as normal from the dYdX Foundation team are myself, David and Josh. Carl and Derek from the Grants team have joined us on stage and from the dYdX Trading team are our routine speakers, Corey, and Marc. For all of you who tuned in on earlier AMAs, Everett has also joined us again, which is awesome. So, the TL:DR of today, David will spend some time going through all things Epoch 7. Questions will be addressed to the dYdX Trading team and touch on all new developments at dYdX. Marc will touch on the recent trust structure, followed by Derek and Carl from the Grants team are back again and we'll talk about the program and the recent developments there. David will then answer questions relating to everything dYdX Foundation.

Finally, we'll be finishing off with an open platform for everyone's questions requested by you here today. At some point, if you want your questions answered and you want to come up on stage, just request to speak, and we'll bring you up towards the end of the AMA. David, over to you.

David (dYdX Foundation): Thanks James as always for being a great moderator. So, like every other Epoch, we're going to kick things off by providing some highlights and KPIs for Epoch 7. We'll be publishing all of this on our blog in the near future, but just walking through some of the initial KPIs for everyone to track. So, to kick things off, the total volume on the dYdX protocol over Epoch 7 was approximately $67 billion with average daily volume decreasing slightly versus Epoch 6 to $2.3 billion. Ending open interest increased to $956 million. This has been relatively stable and total value locked decreased to about $900 million, which has also been relatively stable. Over the course of Epoch 7, 7,300 unique wallets earned 5.8 million $DYDX, through trading, LP and staking rewards. To date, almost 47,000 unique wallets have previously earned $DYDX rewards from retroactive trading and liquidity mining rewards.

As of today, 21,000 unique wallets hold $DYDX and about 2,600 or so hold $stkDYDX. I called this out on the last AMA, but we're continuing to see the trend of an increasing amount of $stkDYDX. Currently, there is about 28 million $DYDX staked to the pool from nearly 2,600 unique stakers. Overall, this is encouraging to see longer-term $DYDX holders, staking their tokens, earning additional yield, and backstopping the overall protocol through the safety module. Regarding the LP rewards in Epoch 7, 37 addresses were eligible for these rewards with the majority earned by one market maker. This is the first time we've seen one market maker accrue more than 50% of the LP rewards. It's something that we've continued to think about in terms of how we provide sustainable liquidity, while still increasing competition in the pool.

In prior Epochs, market makers meeting the 0.25% threshold are now eligible for the pool, following a DRC that was approved by the community. In the current Epoch, there are now 40 addresses, 27 existing and 13 new that did more than 25 basis points of maker volume in Epoch 7, and thus are eligible to participate in the LP rewards program in Epoch 8. So overall we've seen the number of addresses that are eligible for rewards increasing Epoch over Epoch, and yet the actual distribution of LP rewards continues to accrue to several of the largest players. I think overall, this is an area that the community should be focused on around potential ways to improve this formula to again ensure sustainable liquidity but encourage more competition with regards to rewards. I know the dYdX Grants Program has laid out a few RFPs to help address this research question, but I encourage the community to continue to contribute to our forums and think through ways to make this pool more competitive.

In terms of the liquidity staking pool, there was 357 million $USDC staked from 718 users. At the start of Epoch 8, there's about 230 million $USDC, which is actively staked and earning rewards. There's one large staker who had staked over $100,000,000 and who had requested to withdraw in Epoch 6. Starting in Epoch 7, that $100,000,000 ceased or stopped earning rewards, it's considered inactive. So, for the members of the audience, just remember that if you do request to withdraw your $USDC from the liquidity staking pool, in the following Epoch it will stop earning rewards. You must re-stake it to earn rewards, otherwise, it's considered in-active and doesn’t earn any rewards. So not the best use of $USDC more broadly.

With regards to borrowing, five market makers have borrowed $USDC from this pool. We've seen an increasing number of market makers and LPs submit profiles on Commonwealth, which is a precondition for being able to be added as community-approved borrowers. Again, I encourage the community to look at those profiles and comment. Should the community decide, these market makers could be added to the pool and borrow that capital to continue to add liquidity to the overall platform. Regarding circulating supply at the end of Epoch 7, there's currently 9.56% of the total $DYDX supply, excluding the unearned retroactive rewards, which were transferred to the Community Treasury and the $DYDX vested in the Community Treasury, which we also consider to be liquid. I think what's interesting here is we're at the start of Epoch 8 and at the end of this Epoch, there'll be 10% of the total $DYDX supply that will have been distributed to the community.

Two points I want to make, one is that we're still early. Most of the $DYDX has yet to be earned by the community members. All of the distribution pools have been programmed to be distributed over five years. You may think that you're late to the game, but the reality is we're still definitely in the first inning. The second point that I will make is that once we reach the 10% threshold at the start of the next Epoch, which will mean that the community will be fully in control and be able to submit long time lock proposals and reach quorum without any of the locked tokens or investor tokens that have been required past votes. If you look at the distribution of $DYDX tokens, it's a progressive decentralization. With more of the tokens going into the hands of the community at the end of this Epoch, the community will be able to pass any type of proposal, should it choose without the core team or investors participating. Overall, that's a really exciting development and excited to see that come to fruition at the end of this Epoch.

In terms of governance activity, we continue to see active discussions and proposals on the forums on Commonwealth. I think most importantly, the Snapshot vote for the dYdX Grants Program to implement the Guernsey Purpose Trust was almost unanimously supported by the dYdX community. I think participation for the vote was close to 550 unique voters on Snapshot with more than 37 million $DYDX or $stkDYDX voting in favor. This is one of the strongest turnouts we've seen for a proposal, which is encouraging. It's great to see so much support for the dYdX Grants Program. This trust structure is a huge milestone for the community and the dYdX DAO. After the vote passed, we announced on Twitter that the dYdX Foundation will be hosting an AMA tomorrow with Marc Boiron and the Reverie team to discuss the legal framework for non-U.S. DAOs, the Guernsey trust, and what the implications mean for the dYdX DAO and dYdX community more broadly. So, we shared a tweet earlier this evening and encourage everyone to attend. That'll be tomorrow, Tuesday, March 22nd 9:00 PM UTC on Twitter Spaces and that'll be a great forum for further questions that we don't address tonight.

Few other updates. We’re lucky to have Derek and Carl from the dYdX Grants team on the call tonight, they'll answer a bunch of questions from the audience. I think what's really exciting to me is that today they announced wave seven of the dYdX Grants Program, continuing to fund active community members who are building tooling and cool stuff around the protocol. To date, they've already pledged over $1.8 million worth of $DYDX to 47 RFPs or applicants. This is one of the most successful grants programs out there, and it's great to see so many community members apply. Again, if anyone has any ideas, the dYdX Grants Program still has a lot of funding to allocate, so I encourage you to reach out to the dYdX Grants team or apply directly on the website. This is a great way to get involved with the community and build tools that will benefit everyone.

On the delegation side, Josh who is on the call has been spearheading the dYdX Foundation's initiative for Endorsed Delegates. As of today, we have five community members who have filled out all the required information to become Endorsed Delegates. If you're interested in becoming an Endorsed Delegate, check out the post on Commonwealth and follow the onboarding steps.

Few last updates, obviously the dYdX Trading announced the Hedgies NFT collection for anyone who's new in the audience. That was a collection of 4,200 unique NFTs of which 2,443 were included in the initial distribution. Those Hedgies can continue to be earned by traders who are participating in the trading leagues. In the last Epoch, the dYdX Trading team released a custom Explorer for the Hedgies. You can see the entire collection and search via trades, IDs, or backgrounds. Overall, it's really exciting to see all of the activity around Hedgies and how many new people have come into the community. Again, I think we're still super early in terms of really building a community around Hedgies and we’re encouraged by the level of participation in the weekly Hedgies Huddle AMA that is held on Discord. If anyone has any ideas on how to grow the Hedgies community, we're excited to hear your thoughts. Lastly, on the Hedgies point, the dYdX Foundation purchased 205 Hedgies from dYdX Trading. We released a blog post on Commonwealth, not too long ago, announcing plans on how we plan to distribute those. We will announce our first allocation or distribution of Hedgies to active community members later this week.

You do not have to be a trader to earn a Hedgie. Another way to earn a Hedgie is really to be active in governance, active within the community and provide value. I'm excited to share more details on that later this week.

Last few updates on the dYdX Trading side, just so that everyone is aligned. dYdX Trading announced the start of the dYdX beta program for iOS. This is a huge milestone for DeFi, as this is one of the first DeFi protocols to have a mobile application. With this, dYdX has already approached parity from a product perspective with many of the leading CEXs. Hopefully, I'm sure a lot of members in the audience have signed up for the iOS beta. The team appreciates all the feedback and that is getting integrated within the product over the next few weeks, before a full public launch.

Lastly, I want to continue to reiterate that there is currently a fee holiday for traders on dYdX. Fees were reduced by 66% for approximately three months, which is still active. Right now, is a great time to test out the protocol with the lowest fees possible, earn rewards, and get involved with the community.

In terms of administrative steps, Epoch 7 ended on March 15th at 3:00 PM UTC. As per usual, the rewards will be claimable on the website starting tomorrow at 7:51 PM to be exact, which is seven days after the end of the Epoch with a five-hour delay. As always once tokens have been claimed they can be transferred, staked to the safety module, delegated to Endorsed Delegates or other participants within dYdX governance. Thanks a lot, that's it on my side.

James (dYdX Foundation): Thank you for that, David. Okay, great. Let's move on to the pre-populated questions from the Discord, first, for Corey and Everett and the dYdX Trading team, a lot of people from here have been brought in from the iOS beta launch. How has the iOS beta launch gone so far? Is there an ETA for a public release?

Everett (dYdX Trading): Yeah, I can take that one. Can you guys hear me by the way?

James (dYdX Foundation): Yeah. Loud and clear.

Everett (dYdX Trading): Fantastic. So, the iOS beta launch is going well. We received a ton of interest on our waiting lists. We're working on getting as many people into the beta as we can. The amount of feedback that we've received has been fantastic. Thank you to everyone who has helped test and given detailed feedback. John (dYdX Trading) has been working hard to address everything that you guys are bringing up from bugs to feature requests, to localization issues, all that stuff is being triaged and it's being tracked and we're working on it. On the public release side, we're still thinking probably early Q2. So that is sometime next month, there has been a lot of feedback and we want to make sure we ship a quality product to you guys. So, I'm not going to index super hard on that deadline, but we'll provide updates as development progresses.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, Everett. Are there any new updates or product releases additionally to the iOS beta planned over the next few months?

Everett (dYdX Trading): Specifically for the iOS beta?

James (dYdX Foundation): Just generally, is there anything in the pipeline?

Everett (dYdX Trading): Yeah, so yes, there's a lot in the pipeline. A lot of it is coming from the community. A lot of these are requests that we've heard for the last couple of months. To provide some more context, a lot of our dev time has gone into just working on the reliability of the platform in the last couple of months. We're getting closer to the end of that project, where we feel that the exchange reliability is in a decent place. Over the next couple of months, we are going to be focused on a lot of the features that the community has requested. At the top of the list is new market listings. That's something that has been widely requested, all different kinds of markets, so we doubled down on the process around listing those markets and you guys should be seeing a lot of new markets soon. Other features, like reduce only, is in the pipeline and it's actively being worked on right now. Also, we've got a bracket orders feature coming soon and we've got a referral program. On the referral program, you guys can refer your friends and earn a kickback on the fees that they pay. Overall, there is a lot in the pipeline. On top of all those updates, we have V4 as well.

James (dYdX Foundation): Wow. That's awesome. That's super exciting to hear. A broader open question for you and Corey, can you talk about any specifics with V4 progress?

Everett (dYdX Trading): It's a good question. It's a very large project and there are a lot of different components that are still in flux. We're not quite at a point where we're ready to share our progress updates. That being said, I can give a general update in the sense that things are going well, and we're still on track to meet our goals, to launch towards the end of this year. Of course, it's also going to be fully decentralized. If you have not read the blog post that we put out a couple of weeks or months ago, a lot of that information is still relevant. So check that out if you have a chance.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks for that. From a merchandise perspective, I know there's been some hints in the community that we're potentially getting some merch, is there an ETA when this is getting released at all?

Corey (dYdX Trading): There are some ongoing conversations with the dYdX Grants Program. Derek will talk about this later on in the conversation. We are doing some small testing batches of merch in the meantime that our company is just creating. For instance, we may give out merchandise if you're attending some of the events that we are going to be at, like NFT LA. If any of you guys are in LA and are going to that conference, we should have some Hedgie merch that people could take away if you're an attendee at that conference. Other than that, I don't have too much to share at the moment, but people are working on it.

James (dYdX Foundation): On the partnership side of things, are there any partnerships that the community can expect from dYdX in the future?

Corey (dYdX Trading): Other people are building and trying to integrate with dYdX. I'd say one pretty recent example was an OEMS provider. What that means is it's an order execution management system. So, a lot of funds and institutions use these types of products to access a lot of different exchanges at once and have sophisticated order routing as well as sophisticated permissioning for people on their teams. So dYdX was the very first DEX to integrate with an OEMS provider like that. This is a testament to the API tooling that we've been able to build, where a lot of these types of products can start to integrate with dYdX. This means increasing volumes over time, as well as better liquidity. The more institutions that access dYdX, the more liquidity and demand for the platform there's going to be. Also, the dYdX Grants team is working on some exciting integrations. A lot of the funding is kind of public and will be better suited to be answered by the dYdX Grants team specifically.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, guys. That's great. Touching on the legal aspect, Marc, can you touch on the new legal structure that’s just gone through the Snapshot voting?

Marc (dYdX Trading): Sure. If you think of a DAO in general, it's pretty difficult for a DAO to act in a way that's efficient, also compliant from a legal and tax perspective across the board. From one perspective you could take the position that it's not important when you've got like a distributed group of folks, they can do whatever they want, but frankly, that ends up putting the individuals who are putting the time into it at risk. The idea with the Guernsey trust structure is to create something that fits neatly into a DAO without really taking, for lack a better word the 'DAOness' out of a DAO, but also kind of achieving some key goals and three goals that, I think a DAO is generally lacking in is providing limited liability protection for those participating, being able to act in the real world and then tax issues. With the DAO structure, the way that you maintain the ‘DAOness’ of the DAO in this is at first of all, there's no obligation to go to like a government and request permission to create a trust. It's a legal agreement that ends up getting signed, essentially between the trustees, which is the Grants Committee right now, and then the Enforcer, which for dYdX would be Reverie. At that point, the trust comes into existence when assets, being the assets controlled by the multisig, that the committee currently controls get put into this trust. With this structure, the token holders retain a lot of control, which is what gives it its 'DAOness' while the trustees can do whatever they want on a day-to-day basis just like they can now with the multisig, making decisions around grants and distributing those funds. The token holders end up having a lot of decision-making around things like who the trustees are, removing trustees, removing an enforcer, adding an enforcer, actually terminating the trust, and saying we don't want this trust to be in existence anymore. All of those things end up being possible. When you do that, basically what you have is the token holders getting to decide what ends up happening with the assets in the trust. The one part that ends up being a little bit different with this trust existing, is that the assets in the trust can't go back to the token holders at any point in time. Right now, if $DYDX holders decided: hey, we created this trust and we have assets in it, but we don't want it anymore. Those assets could be used for anything else that the token holders decide except sending them back to themselves. I think at later stages if you fast forward 10 years of a DAOs life, that might not make sense at that point in time to continue iterating in that way.

Early on assets are being used for growth and really nothing else. This structure now allows the trust to go ahead and sign agreements. The trustees are protected when they are signing the agreements that they are not liable, which gives them an incentive to be able to act without any concern there. From a tax perspective, it protects participants and users, especially people in the U.S. For dYdX that doesn't matter, right? There is no U.S. focus there, but for other DAOs that ends up being an important part of it.

Where it matters for dYdX though, is that the Grants Committee plans on exchanging DYDX tokens for $USDC to pay out U.S. grantees, for example, because it can't send DYDX to the U.S. This trust structure allows them to do it in a tax-efficient way, meaning that there are no taxes that get paid upon that exchange instead of otherwise needing to find a way to comply with taxes or being subject to one day a government agency saying you owe taxes for this and looking to certain participants in the DAO for it. So, I'll leave it at that and if anyone has questions, happy to answer them.

James (dYdX Foundation): That's awesome. Thanks, Marc. Super excited to go deeper on that as well tomorrow in your Twitter Spaces AMA. Moving on to the Grants team, Carl and Derek, can you provide any updates on the Grants applications in the recently released round?

Carl (dYdX Grants Program): So, for this question, it's phrased in a way that I'm not certain if they're asking for pending applications or applications that have been approved so I can answer in both understandings. For approved applications, for grants that have been funded, we're making lots of great progress. We'll be providing lots of updates in the coming weeks with the initial rounds with lots of teams completely or making significant headway on the grants that have been funded. Chaos Labs, for example, provided a blog update yesterday and they will be providing additional information on that first-round grant of tools that they were building.

We saw Max complete his project. We're seeing a bunch of newsletters out and now that we've unlocked this payment capability, we'll start to see significant improvement on rollouts and progress, given that we'll now be able to fund the initial set of costs and things that were initially restricted due to lack of payment capabilities. With regards to pending applications, we continue to process them as quickly as possible. We appreciate the community being generous and patient with us as we do our best to be efficient and quick while also providing the best possible feedback and making sure that we do our due diligence very thoroughly. To maintain high-quality service for the approved applicants, we stick to our weekly timeframe, responding and providing feedback and following up with applications within one week. Hopefully, that answers this question.

James (dYdX Foundation): Thanks, Carl. That's great. Finally, is there a primary focus for any specific grant application now? So, are there RFPs that you are already looking out for or you're focusing on?

Carl (dYdX Grants Program): We haven't seen governance related grants, right? We have seen quite a bit of trading tools, which are great. Eventually, we will have a playground for our community to be able to play around with all these tools. We've seen newsletters and you've seen dashboards come out, but we haven't seen much with regards to governance. So, we are looking for governance advocates. We're looking for participants who can help the governance process and then promote it. Beyond that, we're also looking for more utility across with Hedgies as well as $DYDX. So that means onboarding it onto different platforms as collateral, or just as trading and then making more use of the Hedgies. We've got a couple of grants coming in, but we are always looking to implement the Hedgies for their best use case and make use of them across the board. So, if there's anything that people come up with that will be awesome and we'll keep working on our end to push out RFPs and think of new ideas for additional applications coming in.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, Carl. That's great. Moving on to David at the dYdX Foundation, is there any advice for people who want to contribute or participate, but don't feel like they have the skillset right now for this?

David (dYdX Foundation): Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think there are a lot of different ways to contribute to the protocol and there's no specified skillset to get involved. I think at a minimum it's joining the community, it's participating in the Discord, it's asking questions, it's helping other people out. It's looking at the Commonwealth forums answering and replying to active threads. You could apply for a dYdX grant. You could submit a proposal. You could become an Endorsed Delegate. The world is your oyster. If you see or experience a pain point, chances are, you're not the only one. That could be taking live notes of the current Epoch 7 AMA and posting that on Twitter, or it could be designing different forms of advertising or collateral or anything. So right now, we have a channel on Discord and a form to volunteer.

We've had directly like several hundred people offer to volunteer. I think you don't have to wait to hear from anyone from the team to just get started. Again, if you see an opportunity, go for it, you can always apply for a grant, from the dYdX Grants Committee and submit an RFP for any opportunity you see fit. In the not-too-distant future, we've been working on launching a formal Ambassador Program. That'll be a more formalized structure to get involved with various working groups focused on different functional areas for the protocol and the DAO. I think right now those are just like some ideas, but again, I encourage anyone who wants to contribute to DM me or anyone from the dYdX Foundation team and I'm sure we can put you in touch with the right people or give you some pointers on how to get involved.

James (dYdX Foundation): Brilliant. Thanks, David. Just a brief one on the difference between dYdX Foundation and dYdX Trading. How is the dYdX Foundation's focus different from dYdX Trading’s focus right now?

David (dYdX Foundation): I think that's a great question. Overall, the dYdX Foundation's mission is really to accelerate the transition towards community control over the protocol and any future version of the protocol. I think largely speaking that the dYdX Foundation team is focused on everything dYdX token, governance, and DAO related. We don't focus necessarily as much on the engineering behind the V3 of the exchange or V4 of the exchange. Ultimately, we're focused on working with the community to formalize the dYdX DAO so that once V4 launches at the end of this year, that protocol, as Everett mentioned, will be fully controlled and governed by the community.

The community already has control over the current version of the protocol, or at least most aspects of it, but V4 will be fully in the hands of the community. I think it just takes time for the community to level up its game, to take on that kind of responsibility. The dYdX Foundation team is working on shepherding that, helping on education, user onboarding, and getting community members involved with the community today. We want to be in a good position to ensure the success of community control over V4 at the end of this year.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, David. How do people go about displaying their contributions? This was mentioned in the Hedgie distribution doc earlier this month, is it worth the community voicing or reaching out to a team member just so they're aware of their contributions and efforts? Or is this just going to be through the production of certain content and the creation of that type of media?

David (dYdX Foundation): Yeah, I think objectively speaking, it's hard to measure contribution because people contribute in different ways. As I mentioned earlier, it's not just about pushing code to GitHub, it could be creating awesome tweetstorms, creating videos, or translating content into a new language among many other ways to be an active contributor in the space. I encourage anyone who is contributing to proactively share your contributions with the community on Discord and/or on Commonwealth.

I think the dYdX Grants team is in the process or has hired a designer to revamp their website and will showcase grant applicants there as well. Overall, if you are working on something, make sure people know about it. Certainly, the whole team is actively looking on Discord and social media channels. We see the high-quality output that's being provided. The more your tool is useful for the broader community, the more likely it's going to be on our radar.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, David. What does being an Endorsed Delegate include? How much work is required to become an Endorsed Delegate and does it matter that the community member doesn't have a huge following on social? Can they provide a huge value to dYdX to become an Endorsed Delegate?

Josh (dYdX Foundation): Hey James, could you repeat the question?

James (dYdX Foundation): So, I guess what does being an Endorsed Delegate include? How much work goes into being an Endorsed Delegate? Does it matter if they haven't got a huge following on social? If someone is not big in the crypto or DeFi ecosystem, can they or anyone be an Endorsed Delegate?

Josh (dYdX Foundation): Endorsed Delegates can be any one of our active community members. I don't think it matters if you have a previous following in crypto. We are mainly looking for people to engage in the dYdX community. In terms of onboarding, there are detailed instructions on Commonwealth. I am also happy to engage with anybody who wants to onboard. Please feel free to DM me. In terms of the onboarding process, I think it's pretty smooth. You can look on Commonwealth for examples of how our other Endorsed Delegates have onboarded, or again, I'm always happy to answer questions.

David (dYdX Foundation): The only thing I would add is like, I think just as a general observation, obviously we've seen a ton of activity on Discord, which is amazing to see. I think, generally speaking, we see a little less activity on the forums on Commonwealth, and I think a big responsibility and role for Endorsed Delegates is really to look at the proposals, the DRCs, and the DIPs on Commonwealth that are submitted by community members, to review them, analyze them, and then provide valuable, constructive feedback to any submitter. Ultimately, we want people to review these proposals. We want people to review the code and we want people to have an opinion and iterate on these proposals over time. If you are interested in becoming an Endorsed Delegate, I encourage you to not only participate on Discord but also be very proactive on Commonwealth and engage and try to see where the opportunities for improvement for the protocol are and participate in the overall governance life cycle.

Josh (dYdX Foundation): Also, you can see the specific profiles that we have represented so far. In terms of Endorsed Delegates, we have a community member, WOO DAO, as well as several student groups. If you belong to any of those groups or think that you fall into another category, we welcome your input and feedback. I'll echo what David said, we are looking for people to critically analyze and engage with the proposals and distribute critical thinking and knowledge across the dYdX community.

David (dYdX Foundation): Lastly, we understand that there's some friction, especially with regards to gas fees and participation in on-chain votes. Empirically we've seen higher turnout for Snapshot votes, which don't require gas versus on-chain votes, but a lot of decisions that change the smart contracts require on-chain votes. There's no way around that. A big responsibility for these Endorsed Delegates is increasing participation. If you're a small token holder and you don't have the time or the expertise, or you don't want to vote on every single proposal and you think governance is important, we encourage you to explore delegation. Ultimately, we're trying to get more tokens into the hands of either subject matter experts and/or people who are going to be very proactive in participating and reviewing every proposal out there, which should benefit all community members.

This is a work in progress, but right now we have five Endorsed Delegates. There is a lot of room for different types of profiles. Again, as Josh mentioned, there are university blockchain clubs, other DAOs, and then there is one individual as well. There is no standard profile here. It’s really about if you are willing to put in the time and be a leader within the broader community who participates in governance.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, guys. That's great. Okay. So, I guess we've got 10 minutes to go. We'll use this time for an open stage AMA. So, if anyone's got any questions and they want to be brought up, just raise your hand and just ask, okay. Brilliant, @Lingebar3134, you're up.

Lingebar3134 (Community Member): So, my question is, are you planning to develop your NFT project and is it possible to make various collaborations or anything else?

Everett (dYdX Trading): Yeah, I can take that on the NFT side. Yes. The NFTs that we built, the Hedgies, do meet the standards of just like the typical NFTs. Technically anyone could integrate Hedgies into their project and provide some kind of integration or utility. On our side, we have a couple of ideas that we're thinking about, but we would also love to hear from the community about different ideas or ways you guys think that Hedgies could be integrated into the product or governance.

James (dYdX Foundation): I think I can also touch on that @lingebar3134. So, we've now also got a part-time Community Manager on board who is knowledgeable about all things NFTs and is passionate about the Hedgies, who will also go around and organize, say like NFT-to-NFT community collabs and joint AMAs in that sense. I know from the perspective of the dYdX Grants Program as well that there are grants where a few community members have applied to develop the Hedgies ranging from a cartoon aspect to a trading education aspect. There are exciting things that are in the pipeline and it's something that we are focusing on more and more as time goes on. @Nick, you should have an invite to come on now.

Nick (Community Member): Oh, yeah. All right. Hey guys, thank you for taking the time. Great thorough conversation here. So yeah, I have a question regarding the geo-restrictions on the protocol for U.S. users, I have a good idea why that's in place. I've done a lot of reading up on dYdX and watching a bunch of interviews with Antonio. So, I don't need to ask why that's the case, but in looking forward and looking ahead to V4 and this ultimate path to full decentralization, are there any areas that you guys could speak of to potentially forecast how maybe the full decentralization might alleviate these geo-restrictions and ultimately open up the protocol to U.S. users? Is that something, I know it's touchy and I know there's a good chance you probably can't even answer that but wondering if there's any way to forecast for the community.

James (dYdX Foundation): If Marc is not here, I'll get a response to you directly from Marc.

Nick (Community Member): Much appreciated. Apologies. I know it's a red-hot question, but yeah, if there's any way to get some color on that, I'd appreciate that.

James (dYdX Foundation): Okay, Brill. Yeah. I'll speak to you in the DMs anyway. Great. Thanks, @Nick. @Deon should be invited up, here we are.

Deon (Community Member): Hello guys. Can you hear me clearly? My question was about Testnet on iOS. Are you guys going to provide for the guys that found some bugs that invested their time to make your product better?

Everett (dYdX Trading): I can take this one. We haven't announced any program like that, but if we do have one, we'll let you guys know as soon as possible.

Deon (Community Member): So, there are no current plans to reward Testnet users?

Everett (dYdX Trading): No current plans. Correct.

Deon (Community Member): Okay. Thank you very much.

James (dYdX Foundation): Appreciate your time. Thank you. @Volodshank hopefully you should be invited up.

Volodshank (Community Member): I invited a number of users and did not get access to the beta testing. How can I get access to the testing?

James (dYdX Foundation): I think there's been a lot of signups, be patient and give it some time. I do think that eventually, this will come. They should be coming to your emails soon. Everett, I'm not sure if you've got anything to add there.

Everett (dYdX Trading): Yeah, not really. We had a lot of signups, probably a little bit more than we expected, your patience would be greatly appreciated.

James (dYdX Foundation): Thanks a lot. Okay. Let's bring you back up @Lingebar3134.

Lingebar3134 (Community Member): So, guys, I have one more question, but it's not from me. It's from @Oleksandr. So, he asked, do you plan to give some benefits to your NFT holders?

Everett (dYdX Trading): I think it's a similar question to the one you asked earlier @Lingebar3134. I would give the same answer in the sense that yeah, we're thinking about it. It sounds like there are a couple of Community Managers and potential dYdX Grants Program applicants who are thinking about the same thing.

Lingebar3134 (Community Member): So, for example, some projects do IRL meetings. Is that something that you’re planning?

James (dYdX Foundation): Yeah, I think that's a great idea. That's something that is absolutely on the horizon and roadmap. We'd love to get as many Hedgies holders and into IRL meetings, in digital meetings, gated access meetings. That is definitely in our plans for the future. Right now with everything being incredibly focused on the release of the iOS app, I can just say it's largely in the works over the next few months. I think from that standpoint, @Lingebar3134, if there's anything like that, like IRL events and different types of benefits that you feel the NFT holders should have, then by all means, I think keep posting in the Hedgies holders channel and it's something that myself and other Community Managers and other core team members look at frequently and do note down. So, this is something that we're actively looking at.

Lingebar3134 (Community Member): Okay. If I can ask, I notice that you sometimes add new NFTs, so in your plan, how much do we want Hedgies to be like 5k, 10k?

James (dYdX Foundation): Yeah. I mean from a price standpoint, that's not something that we really think about or even discuss. I think for us, it's more so that we want Hedgies to become a forward-thinking brand and be an item that the community can be excited about and run with. As discussed in the community and on the previous AMA, Hedgies holders have full IP rights here and they can essentially do what they like with their Hedgies NFT. Essentially, it's the community's decision on where to go with this. So, if there are lots of ideas that are coming from you all then fantastic, we can look at this and start to implement it.

Lingebar3134 (Community Member): Thanks for answering guys.

James (dYdX Foundation): Thanks, @Lingebar3134. So, we've been going on for an hour, I guess we'll call that a day. We appreciate your time and thanks to everyone for tuning in, spending their time, listening and posting questions, asking the team for really detailed responses. Finally, just to say, keep up the comments and interaction. It's encouraging to see all the support and knowledge that all you guys have in the community. I'd say if there's anything you want to see more of, if there's any way you feel that we could run these meetings differently, more interactive, then we'd love to have your feedback. Reach out to me on Discord or any other core team member.

I will finally just touch on that one of the community members has also created a Community Twitter channel, @theboringtrad3r. This is a great way to interact. Here you can see all the recent dYdX announcements, it aggregates all the info, and it's just a great way for the community to catch up and chat through there. As always, keep an eye out on the announcements for new information and releases.

So, let's end on that note. This will be deciphered as usual and posted as soon as we can. We'll keep you updated as soon as the blog post is up and ready.

Thanks!