This is the 20th edition of dYdX Epoch Review, presenting updates from the dYdX community and ecosystem. To learn more, join us on Discord, Twitter, and the Community Forums.

Epoch 19 Highlights

• For Epoch 19 (January 17, 2023 15:00 UTC - February 14, 2023 15:00 UTC). No addresses were identified as wash trading during Epoch 19.

Key Metrics

Trading Rewards

2,876,712 $DYDX were earned over the course of Epoch 19 and will be distributed to 3,467 traders. This is an increase from Epoch 18 where 2,931 traders were eligible for trading rewards.  Learn more about the trading rewards program in our documentation, or our blog posts.

Liquidity Provider Rewards

1,150,685 $DYDX were earned over the course of Epoch 19 and will be distributed to 67 addresses who were eligible for LP rewards in Epoch 18.

Source: Liquidity Provider Rewards Dashboard

75 market (18 new, 57 existing) makers meeting the 0.25% threshold in Epoch 19 are now eligible to earn rewards in Epoch 20. Learn more about the LP Rewards in our documentation, or our blog posts.

Community Treasury

Approximately 766,703 $DYDX vested in the Community Treasury and 1,726,028 $DYDX accrued in the Rewards Treasury over the course of Epoch 19. The dYdX community now has access to 44M $DYDX that has accrued in the Community Treasury and Rewards Treasury to use for DAO and community initiatives, contributor grants, liquidity mining, and much more. Learn more about the Community Treasury in our documentation.

Circulating Supply

15.96% 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 19. Learn more about the $DYDX allocation in our documentation.

What's next?

• Epoch 19 has ended. Welcome to Epoch 20! Epoch 20 started automatically on February 14 at 15:00 UTC and will end on March 14 at 15:00 UTC.
• The Merkle root was proposed on-chain on February 17 at 18:57 UTC and the 7-day waiting period has begun. Epoch 19 rewards will be claimable here on February 21, at 18:57 UTC (7 days after the end of the epoch plus a 4 hour delay). Once tokens have been claimed, they can be transferred 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 (0x01d3348601968aB85b4bb028979006eac235a588) will distribute $DYDX token rewards according to a Merkle tree of balances.

dYdX Governance

Off-chain Snapshots

• Renewal of the dYdX Grants Program (v1.5) for 6 months: On February 8, Reverie created an off-chain snapshot poll for the community to vote on whether the dYdX Grants Program (DGP) should be renewed for 6 months. 69.7M $DYDX (89.8%) from 763 addresses voted to renew the program. This vote does not involve the DGP requesting for more funding from the community treasury, and also includes reducing the minimum number of Trustees from 8 to 5.
• Reduction of Trading Rewards by 45%: On February 15, Callen from Wintermute created an off-chain snapshot poll for the community to vote on whether Trading Rewards should be reduced by 45% from 2.9M $DYDX to 1.6M $DYDX per epoch. Trading Rewards are ~44% of all emissions per epoch, which are excessively high.This reduction retains the excess 1.3M $DYDX in the rewards/community treasury, which can be used by the DAO to spend on V4 necessities. This is the first of 6 recommendations in Wintermute’s v4 vanguard post.

DRCs

From Wintermute’s v4 vanguard post, they have created 6 separate DRCs so that discussions and consensus can be narrowed. In addition to the reduction of trading rewards by 45%, here are the 5 other recommended changes they are proposing.

• Adjustment of maker and taker fees: On taker fees, they are proposing to increase taker fees across all volume bins to reduce toxic flow. Increasing the Taker Fee schedule rates should improve toxic flow due to higher transaction costs and, hopefully, revenue, assuming users are relatively inelastic at higher yet competitive prices. On maker fees, they are proposing to reduce Maker Fees for volume bins $0 - $5M and $25M - $100M, making fees in line with BYBIT and FTX, respectively.
• Market Maker Rebate program: This primarily aims to reduce the reliance on LP rewards and naturally incentivize liquidity. As the number of markets, products, and competitors increases, the average reward per MM is expected to decrease with a fixed reward pool. With a program like this (refer to the post for the reward tiers), MM’s rewards are directly proportional to their maker volume and not bound by the size of the reward pool.
• Removal DYDX/stkDYDX Trading Fee Discounts: dYdX is already one of the cheapest exchanges to trade on, the volume required to achieve discounted fees isn’t particularly high, and removal of the DYDX/stkDYDX component levels the playing field for traders and LPs, irrespective of their DYDX holdings.
• Implement a Yearly Reduction in DYDX Emissions & Amend the Distribution of Rewards: Proposing a new emissions distribution that reduces emissions yearly over the next 4 years and gradually brings them in line with the maximum 2% inflation rate. In the first 2 years, the reduction in emissions is moderate to continue facilitating growth efforts. In the last 2 years, the fixed rate of emissions reduction will become significant, increasing the scarcity of DYDX. The resulting snapshot vote will include the yearly reduction in DYDX emissions and the change in reward distribution.
• Introduce Allocations for Trading Rewards Per Market: Proposing to introduce market allocations for Trading Rewards similar to what already exists in Liquidity Provider Rewards. instead of simply having w=f. Besides marginally reducing the transaction cost for longer tail markets, the current trading rewards program fails to directly incentivize trading in tail-end markets. Check out the exact allocation table in the post.
• Using an Options Program to diversify and generate returns on $DYDX Community Treasury:On February 7, ffilm posted a DRC to spark discussion about a potential options program strategy to generate yield and diversification for the dYdX community treasury. An option program utilizing covered call options would achieve a number of goals including (and not limited to): asset diversification, hedging directional exposure, multiple sources of returns, exchange liquidity, and decreased volatility.

dYdX Ecosystem

• dYdX Grants Program (“DGP”) Updates: The dYdX Grants Trust completed Round 19 of funding, which had 6 grants approved for a total funding amount of $116,800. Read more in their blog post.
• Launch of the dYdX Academy: The re-designed dYdX Academy launched on February 14, and its library consists of a selection of articles and videos, suitable for all skill levels. A lack of knowledge is often cited as a major barrier to entry into DeFi, trading perpetuals on a DEX, & onboarding onto web3. The goal of the dYdX Academy is to fill this gap & aid dYdX in its mission of democratizing access to financial opportunity.
• Delegation: If you hold $DYDX but have no time to review proposals, consider delegating the proposing power and/or voting power of your $DYDX and/or $stkDYDX to one of our 25Endorsed Delegates.

General Updates

• On February 2, Messari released the state of dYdX Q4’2022 report. This report covers the reduction in $DYDX emissions, the increase in active users after the FTX collapse, the postponement of the initial unlock date for locked tokens, and progress of the dYdX chain. Read more about the report here.
• On February 1, the dYdX Foundation hosted an AMA with Reverie to discuss their proposal on renewing the grants program for 6 months. Listen in on the AMA here.
• On January 31, the dYdX Foundation published its inaugural ecosystem annual report. This annual report covers the growth of the dYdX ecosystem, key governance metrics and community initiatives, and overall progress made by the dYdX DAO. Read more in the in-depth report here.
• On January 28, the dYdX Trading team pushed out a reduction in fees for fast withdrawals, which was previously calculated by this formula MAX(transfer gas fee, 0.1% of total withdrawal amount). Now, users only need to pay gas fees. Withdrawals for large sums of USDC should now see significant reductions in fees, and there is still a cap of $200K USDC on fast withdrawals.
• On January 28, the L2 transfer feature was removed due to a recommendation relating to closing possible exploits from the dYdX product and legal teams. Transfers will be available again when v4 mainnet is launched.
• On January 26, the dYdX foundation announced the lock-up extension for $DYDX issued to investors, employees and consultants. The warrant amendment does not alter the staggered unlock that occurs after the initial unlock date, which is now postponed to December 1, 2023. Read more about this announcement here.
• On January 25, the dYdX team hosted Trading Spaces 08 on Discord, where they discussed algo trading and neural nets with n=f(a) labs.
• On January 21, Antonio, Founder and CEO of dYdX Trading was interviewed on the epicenter podcast, where he shared about dYdX’s development philosophy and risks, scaling throughput, and the differences between DeFi and CeFi.. Check out the episode here.