This is the 9th edition of dYdX Epoch Review, presenting updates from the dYdX community and ecosystem. To stay up to date in real-time, join us on Discord, Twitter, and the Forums.

Epoch 8 Highlights

• Total volume on the dYdX protocol was approximately $63B, with Average Daily Volume with Average Daily Volume decreasing slightly to $2.25B. Ending Open Interest increased to $1.03B and Total Value Locked decreased to $898M.
• 9.2K unique wallets earned 5.8M $DYDX through trading, liquidity provider, and staking rewards. 49K unique wallets have previously earned $DYDX rewards from retroactive, trading, and liquidity mining rewards. 22K unique wallets currently hold $DYDX and 3.0K unique wallets currently hold $stkDYDX.
• 40 addresses were eligible for LP rewards with the majority earned by 2 market makers. Competition in the pool is still strong. Market makers meeting the 0.25% threshold in Epoch 8 are now eligible to earn rewards in Epoch 9. 44 addresses (31 existing and 13 new) did more than =>0.25% of maker volume in Epoch 8, and thus are eligible to participate in the LP rewards program in Epoch 9.
• $378M $USDC from 724 users was staked to the Liquidity Staking Pool. At the start of Epoch 9, $257M $USDC is actively staked and earning rewards. 5 market makers have borrowed $USDC from the staking pool.
• 30M $DYDX from 2,858 users was staked to the Safety Module.
• 10.14% of the total $DYDX supply (excluding unearned Retroactive Rewards transferred to the Treasury and the $DYDX vested in the Community Treasury) is considered liquid at the end of Epoch 8.
• The forum discussions and proposals continue to cover various important topics. Most notably, the community almost unanimously voted in support of implementing the Guernsey purpose trust structure (the “Purpose Trust”) contemplated in the “Legal Framework for Non-U.S. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations” post created by the dYdX Foundation. By implementing the Purpose Trust, each member of the Grants Committee became a trustee (collectively, the “Trustees”) of the Purpose Trust. The Purpose Trust came into existence the moment assets, $DYDX, were transferred to the Grants Committee multisig and the Trustees and the Enforcer executed the Purpose Trust Instrument (the “Trust Agreement”).
• On April 18, xenophonlabs.eth created a Snapshot poll to revise the trader rewards formula to (1) increase the fee weight parameter from a=0.67 to a=0.8 and (2) decrease the open interest weight parameter from b=0.28 to b=0.15. Voting started on April 19 at 19:35 UTC and ends in 4 days on April 23 at 19:35 UTC.
• On April 14, Wintermute created a discussion to revise the LP rewards formula to (1) redistribute LP rewards in a more equitable manner to incentivize competition and (2) incentivize liquidity that is beneficial for the dYdX platform. The discussion included two methods to revise the LP rewards formula (A) introduce maker volume and capped rewards (optional), as well as reduce the weight of depth, spread and $stkDYDX in the calculation of liquidity provider rewards and (B) introduce maker volume share through an equally-weighted geometric average of the proportion of Q-score and maker volume share of a given address. After community feedback, we anticipate that a formal DRC and Snapshot poll will start in Epoch 9.
• In Epoch 5, Reverie officially launched the dYdX Grants Program (“DGP”) with 752,000 $DYDX transferred from the Community Treasury to the Grants Committee multi-sig. So far, the DGP has released 8 rounds of grant approvals with a total of approximately $2M in pledged funding. In Epoch 8, over $400K in pledged funding was released over two rounds.
• On February 11, dYdX Foundation posted an open call for Endorsed Delegates. So far, 9 Endorsed Delegates have onboarded. If you’re interested in delegating the voting power and proposing power of your $DYDX or you want to become an Endorsed Delegate please follow the instructions here.
• In Epoch 8, dYdX Foundation announced that 17 out of the dYdX Foundation’s 205 Hedgies have found new homes with dYdX community members! Read more about it here.
• On April 16, dYdX Foundation announced the Ambassador Program. Ambassadors will be organized in different Burrows (working groups) across the DAO: analytics, governance, media, risk analysis, student, and user onboarding. If you are interested in working with like-minded people, have a keen interest in DAOs, and want to contribute to the dYdX community, please fill out the expression of interest form! Prospective Ambassadors will be contacted via email and if selected, will be asked to complete a 1-month trial starting Season 0 (May 1-May 31).
• On March 9, dYdX Trading Inc. announced the start of the dYdX Beta Program for iOS. With a native mobile app, dYdX is approaching par with product offerings from leading centralized exchanges. Traders can trade and monitor their positions on the go, with a blazing-fast and intuitive user experience. Over 10,000 participants were invited to the dYdX Beta Program for iOS. Invites are now closed! If you received an invite to the dYdX Beta Program for iOS, please provide feedback in the #📱┃ios-beta-feedback and #🌎┃localization-feedback channels on Discord.
• dYdX Trading Inc. announced the Hedgies, a 4,200-piece collection of NFTs. 2,443 Hedgies were included in the Initial Distribution. Over the next two years, the remaining Hedgies will be distributed by dYdX Trading Inc. as rewards for top-performing traders in Trading Leagues. On February 14th, dYdX Trading Inc. released a custom explorer for the Hedgies where you can view the entire collection and search via traits, ID, or background.
• dYdX Trading Inc. announced Trading Leagues, a first of its kind product that enhances the trading experience and rewards traders with weekly prizes. There are 5 leagues: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. All traders will start in the Bronze League and work their way up each week, based on performance.
• On April 19, dYdX Trading Inc. announced the end of the fee holiday.
• Epoch 8 ended on April 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC. Epoch 8 rewards will be claimable here on April 20, at 00:13 UTC (7 days after the end of the epoch plus a ~9 hour delay). Once tokens have been claimed, they can be transferred, staked to the Safety module, or delegated to dYdX governance.

Performance Indicators

for Epoch 8 (March 15, 2022 15:00 UTC - April 12, 2022 15:00 UTC)

* Data excludes activity from 14 addresses identified as wash trading during Epoch 8.

~22K unique addresses currently hold $DYDX and ~3.0K unique addresses currently hold $stkDYDX.

~49K unique addresses have previously claimed $DYDX rewards from retroactive, trading, and liquidity mining rewards.

Trading Rewards

3,835,616 $DYDX were earned over the course of Epoch 8 and will be distributed to 7,024 traders. Trading rewards were distributed proportionally based on a formula rewarding both fees paid, $stkDYDX, and average open interest.

Competition in this epoch remained flat, as evidenced by slightly lower fees paid and the sum of all trader scores. However, the traders eligible for rewards and the number of active traders increased slightly.

A breakdown of the adjusted trading activity and Trading Rewards distribution can be found below:

Source: Foundation Metrics Page

dYdX Trading Inc. identified 14 Ethereum addresses that conducted clear wash trading during Epoch 8. These addresses were removed from receiving Trading Rewards for Epoch 8. Their fees paid and open interests were also excluded from the Trading Rewards calculations, so other traders were not diluted. Additionally, these addresses were excluded from potential eligibility for the Liquidity Provider Rewards program for Epoch 9 and their volume was excluded from calculations as well. Learn more about Wash Trading here.

• $$0x184fa41310af74da62ecf0a543bafeb84942e374$$
• $$0xdfedf4132823f321c056b085e94e5af18330f753$$
• $$0x39d68ea6d6fd255dca3ac44373376ce77737c792$$
• $$0x8aac83a565a72cb31fb504d5e0117eabeab0ac88$$
• $$0x2b73bfa759199f5695a4238cb1645bf048b628d2$$
• $$0x66fbcbb9286b57abddbdf3e322588db62a0a427b$$
• $$0xfa26c724e9c5ad0ade0b5aab2fdcb5f5141d4199$$
• $$0xde849d7fc99fce86422af8d9ef0b695a4746334d$$
• $$0x151920468be99b653489180e818d516bf02b794b$$
• $$0x500e4a38d09395b7c83594fc5eb6c207cfb56096$$
• $$0x324563717b20e19e71c5440aff6c9762ccfc08cc$$
• $$0xd568dc708af22859ec6fa9e9169699582bd3e25e$$
• $$0x49c8c1d3140fb5b79fba28dbdc385d61b20623e9$$
• $$0x1dffba98879b4a03f05786a59bb2bd81833d8e12$$

As an input to the Trading Rewards calculation, users’ fees paid, $stkDYDX balance, and average open interest were reset to 0 at the start of Epoch 9.

Learn more about the trading rewards program in our documentation, or our blog post.

Liquidity Provider Rewards

1,150,685 $DYDX were earned over the course of Epoch 8 and will be distributed to 40 market makers based on a formula rewarding a combination of uptime, two-sided depth, bid-ask spreads, $stkDYDX, and the number of markets supported.

In Epoch 8, there were 40 addresses in total eligible for LP rewards. The following chart displays the rewards distribution by market maker over the course of the epoch:

Source: Liquidity Provider Rewards Dashboard

In Epoch 6, the dYdX community voted strongly in favor of reducing the LP rewards volume threshold for market makers from 1% to 0.25%.

The Foundation Metrics Page has maker volume charts to see which addresses did >=0.25% of maker volume in a given epoch:

44 addresses (31 existing and 13 new) did more than =>0.25% of maker volume in Epoch 8, and thus are eligible to participate in the LP rewards program in Epoch 9.

As an input to the Liquidity Provider Rewards calculation, market maker’s uptime, two-sided depth, bid-ask spreads, $stkDYDX, and the number of markets supported are reset to 0 at the start of Epoch 9. New market makers providing >=0.25% of maker volume in Epoch 9 will be eligible to join the pool in Epoch 10.

Learn more about the trading rewards program in our our documentation, or our blog post.

Liquidity Staking Pool

$378M $USDC was staked to the pool over the course of Epoch 8 from 724 users. 383,562 $DYDX were earned over the course of Epoch 8 and distributed pro-rata every second to stakers. A large staker continued to stake $200M $USDC (over 50% of the pool) earning the majority of rewards even though this user requested to withdraw an additional $100M $USDC.

$USDC staked by address at the end of the epoch is as follows:

Source: Etherscan

65 users requested to withdraw before the Blackout Period in Epoch 8. These inactive $USDC funds can now be withdrawn and are no longer earning $DYDX rewards. Users must request to withdraw their funds before the Epoch 9 Blackout Window (last 2 weeks of the epoch) to withdraw their funds starting in Epoch 10.

5 market makers borrowed $USDC from the staking pool. The maximum amount borrowed by a market maker was just over $45M $USDC. These borrowed funds are used to increase liquidity on the dYdX platform.

Source: Dune

Learn more about the trading rewards program in our our documentation, or our blog post.

Safety Staking Pool

30M $DYDX was staked to the pool over the course of Epoch 8 from 2,858 users. 383,562 $DYDX were earned over the course of the epoch and distributed pro-rata every second to stakers. The top 5 stakers account for over 35% of $stkDYDX.

$DYDX staked by address at the end of the epoch is as follows:

At the beginning of Epoch 4, there was strong community backlash against large investors staking their locked tokens in the Safety Module. In the event of a shortfall, $DYDX staked to the Safety Module could be slashed. As a result, investors would be in default of their obligations and would be required to purchase an equivalent amount of $DYDX. While investors are technically permitted to stake their locked tokens, the dYdX Foundation requested for investors to not stake their locked $DYDX and to withdraw any $DYDX currently staked. Several large investors unstaked their $DYDX. Investors are required to comply with the transfer restrictions enforced through contractual agreements with the dYdX Foundation. The dYdX Foundation will continue to monitor investor wallet addresses and work with larger investors to ensure competitive returns from the Safety Staking Pool.

210 users requested to withdraw before the Blackout Period in Epoch 8. These inactive $DYDX funds can now be withdrawn and are no longer earning $DYDX rewards. Users must request to withdraw their funds before the Epoch 9 Blackout Window (last 2 weeks of the epoch) to withdraw their funds starting in Epoch 10.

Learn more about the safety staking pool in our documentation, or our blog post.

Community Treasury

Approximately 766,703 $DYDX vested in the Community Treasury over the course of Epoch 8. The Community Treasury now holds 31,591,130 vested $DYDX tokens.

In Epoch 5, Reverie officially launched the DGP with 752,000 $DYDX transferred from the Community Treasury to the Grants Committee multi-sig. Over 8 rounds, the DGP has approved over 50 grants with a total of just under $2M in pledged funding. We are excited about the level of community engagement and the diversity of applications.

We hope to see continued participation in governance and active distribution of vested $DYDX on an ongoing basis through contributor grants, community initiatives, liquidity mining, and other programs.

Learn more about the community treasury in our documentation.

What's next?

Epoch 8 has ended

Welcome to Epoch 9! Epoch 9 started automatically on April 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC and will end on May 10, 2022 at 15:00 UTC.

Epoch 8 ended on April 12, 2022 at 15:00 UTC. Epoch 8 rewards will be claimable here on April 20, at 00:13 UTC (7 days after the end of the epoch plus a 9 hour delay). Once tokens have been claimed, they can be transferred, staked to the Safety module, or delegated to dYdX governance.

Circulating supply

10.14% of the total $DYDX supply (excluding unearned Retroactive Rewards transferred to the Treasury and the $DYDX vested in the Community Treasury) is considered liquid at the end of Epoch 8. These earned $DYDX tokens can be claimed in perpetuity.

Claim your $DYDX rewards

The Merkle root was proposed on-chain on April 13 at 00:13 UTC and the 7-day waiting period has begun. Epoch 8 rewards will be claimable here on April 20, at 00:13 UTC (7 days after the end of the epoch plus a ~9 hour delay). Once tokens have been claimed, they can be transferred, staked to the Safety module, or delegated to dYdX governance.

The Merkle tree data, which is a list of (address, reward) pairs, is available here.

Under the hood, the Merkle Distributor smart contract will distribute $DYDX token rewards according to a Merkle tree of balances. The tree will be updated at the end of each epoch with each user's cumulative reward balance. An update is performed by setting the proposed Merkle root to the latest value returned by the oracle contract. The proposed Merkle root can be made active after a waiting period has elapsed. During the waiting period, dYdX Governance can freeze the Merkle root, in case the proposed root is incorrect or malicious. Root updates can be unpaused by a ShortTimelockExecutor.

Governance Forums

DIP 9 (off-chain) - Implement a Guernsey Purpose Trust for the DGP - PASSED

On March 17, Reverie created a Snapshot poll for the DGP to implement the Purpose Trust contemplated in the “Legal Framework for Non-U.S. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations” post created by the dYdX Foundation. The Snapshot vote concluded with almost unanimous community support in favor of implementing the Purpose Trust (37.4M D$YDX/stk$DYDX and 531 voters).

By implementing the Purpose Trust, each member of the Grants Committee became a trustee of the Purpose Trust. The Purpose Trust came into existence the moment assets, $DYDX tokens, were transferred to the Grants Committee multisig and the Trustees and the Enforcer executed the Purpose Trust Instrument.

The Purpose Trust is a type of trust that has no beneficiaries and has only one obligation for the Trustees: fulfill the purpose of the Purpose Trust. As Trustees, the Grants Committee must fulfill the purpose of the Purpose Trust that is consistent with the purposes stated in the DIP. To make sure that Trustees operate in line with the purpose, Guernsey law requires that the Purpose Trust have an “enforcer” to hold the trustees accountable legally and make information requests. As contemplated by the Trust Agreement, Reverie will be the enforcer of the Purpose Trust (the “Enforcer”).

The implementation of the Purpose Trust will provide the following benefits:

• No government approval is required for the formation of the Purpose Trust,
• $DYDX holders retain more control. They may add or remove Trustees, terminate the trust, and add or remove a purpose from the Trust Agreement,
• Limited liability for DAO actors and $DYDX holders,
• Trustees can act on behalf of the trust on-chain and off-chain,
• The Purpose Trust trust does not pay income tax and has no filing or reporting obligations, and
• Allows converting $DYDX to stablecoins without tax liabilities to enable $USDC based grants.

Note, an on-chain vote was not required to implement the Purpose Trust.

DRC - A Step Towards a More Equitable Liquidity Provider Reward Structure

On April 14, Wintermute created a discussion to revise the LP rewards formula to (1) redistribute LP rewards in a more equitable manner to incentivize competition and (2) incentivize liquidity that is beneficial for the dYdX platform, “desired liquidity.” Wintermute recognized the need to revamp the LP rewards formula because LP rewards have been dominated by 2 addresses, LPs doing high shares of volume are not being rewarded equitably, and the current formula is disproportionately rewarding sub-optimal liquidity.

The discussion includes two methods to achieve the goals outlined above:

(A) Introduce maker volume and capped rewards (optional), as well as reduce the weight of depth, spread and $stkDYDX in the calculation of liquidity provider rewards.

Potential benefits:

• Traders should enjoy greater liquidity because spreads will get tighter as LPs compete for market share.
• Rewards associated with orders deep in the orderbook are reduced but not fully discentivized.
• Reducing the weight of $stkDYDX encourages active LP participation and minimizes a barrier for new entrants.

Potential disadvantages:

• Overpenalizing deep liquidity.
• LPs may behave in a less optimal manner when their respective cap is hit.

(B) Introduce maker volume share through an equally-weighted geometric average of the proportion of Q-score and maker volume share of a given address.

Potential benefit:

• LPs are better incentivized to perform well on both Q-score and volume.

Potential disadvantages:

• G-score compounds maker volume share with Q-score and as a result, a single LP could monopolize rewards.
• LPs can still obtain a large proportion of rewards without a large share of volume.

After community feedback, we anticipate that a formal DRC and Snapshot poll will start in Epoch 9.

DRC - dYdX Trader Rewards Mechanism Review

On March 28, Max Holloway | Xenophon Labs completed a grant to review the trader rewards mechanism and posted a discussion for community feedback. On April 18, xenophonlabs.eth followed up on the discussion with a Snapshot poll to revise the trader rewards formula. Voting started on April 19 at 19:35 UTC and ends in 4 days on April 23 at 19:35 UTC. Read the full research paper from Thomas Cintra and Max Holloway here. The research led to many valuable findings, a few of which we have included below.

• There is a “Nash equilibrium” for the amount of fees paid by profit-maximizing traders and according to the model developed by Xenophon Labs, traders can compute the optimal amount of fees spent using the open-source code.
• The Nash equilibrium sum of fees paid is roughly linear in the fee weight parameter, b. The authors expect that an X% increase in fee weight parameter will lead to at least an X% increase in fees paid, when to a 0% increase in fee weight parameter.
• There is little evidence that incentivizing open interest has led to higher long-term protocol growth.
• The Nash equilibrium fees paid explains why we observe heightened volume at the end of each epoch. Swapping $DYDX into stable assets to be distributed as trader rewards will lead to more predictable trading volumes, more rewards participation, more protocol revenues, and more accessibility of trader rewards to smaller traders.

Overall, Xenophon Labs recommended (1) increasing the fee weight parameter a from 0.67 to 0.80, (2) decreasing the open interest parameter b from 0.28 to 0.15, and (3) keeping the staking parameter the same.

DGP Update

In Epoch 5, Reverie officially launched the DGP with 752,000 $DYDX transferred from the Community Treasury to the Grants Committee multi-sig. The Grants Committee, consisting of 8 committee members committed to dYdX community growth, will manage the multi-sig to fund RFPs. So far, the DGP has released 8 rounds of grant approvals with a total of almost $2M in pledged funding. In Epoch 8, over $400K in pledged funding was released over 2 rounds.

The two largest grants from Epoch 8 are:

• ETHGlobal Event Sponsorship ($225K) - sponsoring 4 different ETHGlobal events as a leading sponsor, including ETHAmsterdam, HackMoney, ETHNewYork and ETHMexicoCity, and
• Analytics Dashboard ($75K) - Llama has started a 3 month project to build a dashboard that explores data across multiple on-chain and API based endpoints to provide an overview of dYdX activity and metrics.

Completed grants include:

• Liquidation Alert Tool - A self-hosted liquidation alerting tool to alert traders of any asset price nearing their margin liquidation levels on a dYdX position. Check out the MVP of the liquidation alert tool available here.
• DAO Organizational Structure Research - A deep dive research report around historical and existing DAO structures with guidance around successful best practices. Read more about it here.
• Tradingview Integration - Application integrating any Tradingview strategy to execute directly on dYdX Trading.
• Rewards Optimization Research and Paper - A research report and code samples that will determine optimal trading strategies for rewards maximization. Read more about it here.
• Funding Rates Page - An interactive web app to give traders a view of all dYdX asset funding rates across multiple timeframes.

Are you interested in applying for an RFP or have an idea for an RFP? Reach out and read more about the DGP here.

Delegation

On February 11, dYdX Foundation posted an open call for Endorsed Delegates. As we move towards V4, Endorsed Delegates are needed to help ensure community-led growth, development, and the self-sustainability of the dYdX protocol.

If you hold $DYDX and/or $stkDYDX but have no time to review proposals, gas is too expensive to vote, or you don't have enough information about potential delegates, consider delegating the proposing power and/or voting power of your $DYDX and/or $stkDYDX to one of the Endorsed Delegates:

• Blockchain at UCLA,
• Blockchain at Michigan,
• Mx,
• WOO DAO,
• Blockchain at Columbia,
• Xenophon Labs,
• Dartmouth Blockchain,
• Blockchain at Berkeley, or
• BoilerBlockchain at Purdue University.

If you’re interested in delegating the voting power and proposing power of your $DYDX and/or $stkDYDX or you want to become an Endorsed Delegate please follow the instructions here.

Hedgies allocation

dYdX Foundation purchased 205 Hedgies to promote the growth of the dYdX protocol and governance. On February 14, dYdX Foundation posted a list of potential actions that may result in dYdX community members being rewarded with Hedgies.

We are happy to announce that 17 Hedgies have found new homes with dYdX community members!

Below, we announce the recipients and the reasons why they were chosen.

• Upload - For improving the onboarding and community experience in the Mandarin speaking Discord channel over the past year. Upload joined in March 2021 and is a valuable member of the dYdX community.
• Abel - For starting the Spanish speaking dYdX Discord channel and starting the dYdX en Español Twitter channel. Also, Abel received a $15K grant to continue his great work producing content for the dYdX community.
• Blockchain at UCLA - For being the first Endorsed Delegate to onboard.
• Blockchain at Michigan - For being the second Endorsed Delegate to onboard.
• mx - For being the third Endorsed Delegate to onboard, actively answering questions from new users on Discord, and meaningfully contributing to community discussions on Discord.
• Max Holloway (Xenophon Labs) - Because he was the first grantee from the DGP to fully complete a project and for his research about dYdX Trader Rewards.
• NTInc - For assisting with determining the rarity of the dYdX Foundation’s Hedgies NFT collection and providing actionable insights to the community.
• MrDEG for ongoing support in the Japanese dYdX community and the creation of the unofficial dYdX Japan Discord.
• 0xbrar.eth / VESEMIR (0x4f4492af7309d947e3727a7c70bccda52bfa6543) - For voting on 5 on-chain DIPs, voting on the recent Snapshot poll to implement a Guernsey Purpose Trust for the DGP, and holding $stkDYDX.
• Mirrash.eth - For producing the first two Hedgie Huddle POAPs and for contributing to the broader dYdX community and Hedgie discussions.
• Andy GG - The winner of the first community initiated event.
• Brovadana - The most active community member on our governance forum with 15 posts in the past month.
• 0xVespasian - For starting a thorough discussion thread on the community forum about token distribution in V4.
• 0x685 | JS - For producing dYdX and Hedgie specific content over the past month. JS has been very active in driving governance initiatives and onboarding new users on Discord and Twitter.
• Oleksandr - For creating a community led dYdX Ukraine Twitter, Telegram and Medium page translating and producing regular updates and articles to onboard new Ukrainian speaking users. Oleksandr has been outstanding at helping the community in Discord.
• Kikalxd - For creating the dYdX weekly recap, for being supportive with document translation into Russian and for creating Russian onboarding tutorials for new and existing users here.
• ShippooorDAO - For creating the dYdX Info Twitter channel.

Want to get your hands on one of the dYdX Foundation’s 188 perpetual-loving quill balls? Easy. Get active in Governance!

Ambassador Program

dYdX Foundation received a $40,000 grant to fund recruitment initiatives for an Ambassador Program. In Epoch 8, eshwar.eth started a discussion about the Ambassador program that resulted in constructive community feedback about the operational structure and compensation for ambassadors.

On April 16, dYdX Foundation announced the Ambassador Program. Ambassadors will be organized in different Burrows (working groups) across the DAO: analytics, governance, media, risk analysis, student, and user onboarding.

If you are interested in working with like-minded people, have a keen interest in DAOs, and want to contribute to the dYdX community, please fill out the expression of interest form! Prospective Ambassadors will be contacted via email and if selected, will be asked to complete a 1-month trial starting Season 0 (May 1-May 31).

A few key details for prospective ambassadors:

• Prospective ambassadors that are contacted will be invited to and compensated for a 1 month trial period before being accepted into the Ambassador Program.
• Ambassadors will be compensated for their time at a rate of $25 per hour, capped at 20 hours per week.
• Ambassadors may receive up to $10,000 of Burrow funding over the course of a season (3 months, starting June 1).

Follow our announcements on Commonwealth and Discord for more information about the Ambassador Program.

dYdX Trading Updates

iOS Beta

On March 9, dYdX Trading Inc. announced the start of the dYdX Beta Program for iOS. This is one of the first apps to be natively released by a DeFi protocol, and the dYdX Trading Inc. team was hard at work for many months. With a native mobile app, dYdX is approaching par with product offerings from leading centralized exchanges. Traders can trade and monitor their positions on the go, with a blazing-fast and intuitive user experience.

In total, over 10,000 participants were invited to the dYdX Beta Program for iOS. Invites are now closed! If you received an invite to the dYdX Beta Program for iOS, please provide feedback in the #📱┃ios-beta-feedback and #🌎┃localization-feedback channels on Discord.

Hedgies

On January 26th, dYdX Trading Inc. announced the Hedgies, a 4,200-piece collection of NFTs. 2,443 Hedgies were included in the Initial Distribution. Over the next two years, the remaining Hedgies will be distributed by dYdX Trading Inc. as rewards for top-performing traders in Trading Leagues. In terms of utility, holding a Hedgie results in a one-tier increase in $DYDX fee tier discount on the dYdX protocol. Explore the Hedgies on hedgies.wtf or OpenSea and follow the Hedgies on Twitter, @HedgiesOfficial.

On February 14th, dYdX Trading Inc. released a custom explorer for the Hedgies where you can view the entire collection and search via traits, ID, or background.

Trading Leagues

On January 25th, dYdX Trading Inc. announced Trading Leagues, a first of its kind product that enhances the trading experience and rewards traders with weekly prizes. Trading Leagues is a new type of competition structure that rewards elevated performance on a consistent basis. There are 5 leagues: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. All traders will start in the Bronze League and work their way up each week, based on performance. In addition to bragging rights, traders can compete head-to-head for top spots, Hedgies, and even cash ($USDC) prizes.

New features

• XLM-USD, ETC-USD, LUNA-USD, and NEAR-USD Perpetual Markets are live for trading. Go long or short with up to 10× leverage, cross margining, and zero gas fees. dYdX now supports 33 Perpetual markets, with more coming soon. Read more about it here.
• Profiles are now live on dYdX! You can visit any profile by clicking on a row in any leaderboard to view a trader's 30D performance and their Hedgie holdings. Also, visit your own profile by clicking "Profile" in the main navigation page. When viewing your own profile, you'll be able to see all the base profile data along with an overview of your rewards. Read more about it here.
• Gasless deposits are now live and the threshold was reduced to $500 $USDC for your first deposit and $1,000 $USDC for subsequent deposits. Read more about it here.
• On January 25, Season 1 of Trading Leagues officially started with 4,543 traders entering the Bronze League. Enter now to win part of the weekly cash prizes. Read more about it here.
• dYdX Trading Inc. added a dashboard to the rewards data page for traders to see the rewards boost they receive for staking $DYDX. Read more about it here.
• dYdX is now live on Staking Rewards! Read more about it here.
• On April 19th, the 3 month fee holiday came to an end and fees reverted back to previous levels. Read more about it here.
• dYdX UI is now translated into Spanish, Turkish, French, Portuguese, simplified Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and Korean for a total of 9 languages. Read more about it here.
• AlgoTrader has partnered with dYdX to become the first POEMS to enable derivative trading through a DEX. Read more about it here.

Social

• dYdX Trading Inc. is now @dYdX on Twitter. Follow @dYdX for all the latest news, updates, and thoughts from dYdX!
• The DGP and the dYdX Foundation teams co-hosted an AMA with Marc Boiron, Chief Legal Officer at dYdX Trading Inc., and discussed the dYdX Grants Guernsey Trust Structure. You can listen to the full AMA here.
• dYdX Foundation started a new series of dYdX community calls called the Hedgie Huddle. If you love all things Hedgies and love collecting POAPs, join us for our weekly huddle every Wednesday at 9 PM UTC. RSVP here.
• Antonio, founder and CEO of dYdX Trading Inc., wrote and shared a brief history of dYdX. Read more about it here.
• dYdX Foundation introduced the dYdX Ambassador Program. If you believe that dYdX can become the biggest crypto exchange and want the responsibility of contributing to the growth and success of the dYdX protocol, complete the expression of interest form. Read more about it here.
• The DGP is accepting applications! The DGP represents one of the largest grants programs in DeFi to fund community initiatives. You can read more about it here or submit an application here.
• dYdX Foundation is hiring! Join us as a Country Lead, a Marketing Associate, a Business Operations & Finance Associate, or a Community Manager.
• Shout out to @theboringtrad3r for creating the dYdX Community on Twitter. Follow and read more about it here.
• Shout out to @Kikalxd 🦔for creating instructional videos for the dYdX community in Russian. Read more about it and watch it here.
• The dYdX community hosted a movie night. Vote weight depended on the number of POAPs that a given dYdX community member had collected. Read more about it here.
• Shout out to grant recipient @shippooor for releasing an initial version of their Twitter bot posting dYdX order alerts/market activity updates! Follow @dydxinfo.
• Corey Miller, Growth Lead at dYdX Trading Inc. was featured on DeFridays. Listen to the full discussion here.
• Congratulations to Andy GG, the winner of the first dYdX community initiated event!
• Members of the dYdX Trading Inc. and Foundation teams were at NFT LA, Avalanche Summit, the Harvard Blockchain Conference, the Columbia Hackathon, and Paris Blockchain Week. Keep an eye out for us at DevConnect/Eth Amsterdam, the Cornell Blockchain Conference and Crypto Bahamas.