TL;DR

The dYdX Community voted to launch the dYdX Grants Program. The following outlines key milestones and updates from the program’s progress.

• Financial Position: dYdX Grants received $9.2 million in funding from the community and the dYdX Ecosystem Program:
  
  • 13,114,754 DYDX from the community treasury 
  • 1,026,902 DYDX and $789,190 USDC from the previous grants program 
• Current Holdings: The program currently holds $3.3 million USDC and 9.1 million DYDX. In alignment with its goal to maintain a $5–6 million stablecoin reserve for operational stability, the team plans to diversify a greater portion of DYDX over the coming months.
• Program Focus: Over the past two months, efforts have centred on assessing existing grants for renewal and initiating new funding opportunities to strengthen infrastructure, research, and integrations across the ecosystem.
• Activity Update: Since August 8, 2025, the dYdX Grants Program has renewed five agreements and funded fourteen new grants. In total, the program has engaged with more than 15 grantees contributing to the ongoing development and growth of the dYdX ecosystem.‍
• Outlook: The program has established a strong foundation for ecosystem growth. It will continue to monitor milestones, evaluate impact, and support contributors advancing infrastructure, research, integrations, and adoption within the dYdX ecosystem.

Financial Highlights

Existing Grants: Renewals and Impact

Free Deposit Program (Farsight & Informal Systems)

‍To enhance the onboarding experience for traders, the Free Deposit Program continues to subsidise gas fees on deposits exceeding $20 USD from Ethereum and other Layer 2 networks. Over the past three months, the program facilitated $67M USD in subsidized deposits, reducing friction for both new and existing users across the dYdX ecosystem.

Observatory Dashboard (RockawayX)‍

RockawayX maintains and enhances the Observatory dashboard, a key monitoring tool for the dYdX Chain. Their work has focused on the ongoing operation of the MEV discrepancy monitoring system, the maintenance of dedicated nodes to track potential MEV activity, and the integration of MEV-related data into the Observatory newsfeed. The dashboard tracks MEV discrepancies across validators in the active set, ensuring compatibility and readiness for the launch of the Designated Proposer Set.

In addition, Observatory provides ongoing insights into validator activity, including node performance, commission rates, missed blocks, and staking participation. These initiatives strengthen transparency, security, and operational resilience across the network.

dYdX Data Services (Numia)

Numia, a data infrastructure provider supporting the dYdX ecosystem, delivers dashboards, APIs, and analytics for developers, contributors, and community members. The renewed grant introduces a new real-time DYDX token dashboard, currently under development, which provides detailed insights into token flows across chains, centralized and decentralized exchanges, trader behaviour, and whale activity.

New Grants: Expanding the Ecosystem

Designated Proposer Set (8 Validators)‍

Following the v9.0 software upgrade on August 31, 2025, which introduced designated proposers, eight validators (TTT VN, Rhino, Kingnodes, CryptoCrew, Kiln, Pro Delegators, Informal Systems, and Crosnest) received grants to operate this new mechanism. This upgrade enhances network performance, reliability, and decentralisation. Since the launch of the Designated Proposer Set on September 27, 2025, average block times have improved to approximately 750ms, a 25% reduction from 1s at the start of the month.

Order Entry Gateway Service – OEGS (Imperator)

‍Imperator is operating the Order Entry Gateway Service (OEGS), a load-balanced set of nodes designed to optimise proposer performance and reliability. This grant strengthens the dYdX Chain’s scalability and uptime, improving infrastructure resilience for all traders.

Tokenomics & Fee Tier Research (Nethermind)

‍Nethermind Research is conducting research into long-term tokenomics and incentive design for the dYdX ecosystem. The first phase of this work has produced proposals aimed at simplifying fee tiers and reducing protocol-level trading rewards, streamlining incentives while keeping the system sustainable.

Partner Integration Development (CLC)‍

CLC is leading new wallet and partner integrations, including onboarding flows for providers such as Crypto.com. enabling trading competitions. The efforts of this grant are designed to expand access and streamline user participation in the dYdX ecosystem through preferred trading platforms.

TradingView Integration (Nethermind)

Nethermind Engineering is building an integration with TradingView’s Broker REST API, enabling real-time and historical dYdX v4 market data to be visible directly within TradingView. This integration will significantly enhance market visibility and user engagement across the broader trading community.

Looking Ahead

The first two months of the program have set a strong foundation for scaling impact across infrastructure, research, integrations, and user adoption. As the program matures, the team will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of funded initiatives, share progress with the community, and align grants toward the long-term success of the dYdX ecosystem.

This is the beginning of a more regular cadence of updates. Future posts will include milestone tracking, measurable impact, and highlights of ecosystem contributors pushing the protocol forward.

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