On June 13th, the dYdX Foundation hosted a discussion on Discord regarding general updates, current governance proposals, and an Epoch 10 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 in to this AMA in Epoch 10 Review. Thanks to those that are in Europe who have tuned in late again to listen and ask any questions. As usual, we're really excited to keep up these AMAs and Epoch reviews with you all. Both dYdX and dYdX Foundation are aiming to become more transparent and open with their thoughts with everything pertaining to dYdX and the DAO. Again, we've got a POAP for those who are attending and this will be dropped probably mid-way through this Epoch review. Alucard.eth, who is in the audience here, will likely post a link in the Hedgies-general channel. The secret word will be required to submit that Google form. So pay attention to that.

Again, as usual, let's start off with a few housekeeping rules. Please keep the questions you want asked posted in the Discord. As usual after the Epoch review, we'll open up the stage for an AMA. When you do request, and if you're invited up, please refrain from any price discussion. So that being said, here today from the dYdX Foundation team and myself, David and Josh, we also have Cliffton in the audience there. From the dYdX Trading team are our routine speakers, Corey and Marc. So for the TL;DR of today, David will spend some time going through all things Epoch 10. Questions will be addressed to the dYdX Trading team and touch on all new developments at dYdX. Marc will then touch on a few other mainly legal elements. David will then answer questions related to the dYdX Foundation. We'll finish off with an open platform for all questions requested by you all here today.

It would be great to hear your thoughts on how we can potentially better run these meetings in a more interactive manner. So if you've got any questions or any suggestions, we're happy to hear them in the comments and/or at the end of this. I'll pass over to you, David. Thanks.

David (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, James. Welcome, everyone. So similar to past Epoch reviews, I'll kick things off by just providing some highlights and KPI's from Epoch 10. All of this will be published in a blog post on the dYdX Foundation website in the near future, if it hasn't been done already. Total volume during the last Epoch decreased pretty significantly. It was approximately $28 billion, and the average daily volume decreased to about $1 billion. In addition, ending open interest decreased to around $640 million and TVL decreased a little less to $829 million.

Obviously, we're in a general bear market and a challenging environment that is affecting all of crypto and DeFi in particular. Generally speaking, our volumes have traded downwards in line with centralized exchanges. Having said that, our market share in terms of volumes is relatively stable. So I think it is a reflection of just general market conditions. As the market recovers at some point, we are well positioned to grow with that. But it's clear that from a pure metrics standpoint, the last Epoch was a challenging one. We continue to build and focus on the long term.

In terms of wallets, last Epoch, there were approximately 7000 unique wallets that earned 5.8 million $DYDX through trading, liquidity provider, and staking rewards. In the last 10 Epochs, there's been approximately 52,000 unique wallets that previously earned rewards. There are currently 23,000 unique wallets that currently hold $DYDX and 3000 unique wallets that currently hold $stkDYDX. I would say I find this way encouraging actually, given the volatility in the token price and just general market sentiment. We've seen the number of $DYDX holders stay relatively flat every Epoch for the last few Epochs. We continue to see the trend of an increasing number of wallets staked to the safety module. I think this shows the long term focus for some of our token holders. Currently, this remains relatively flat Epoch over Epoch.

In terms of the liquidity provider (LP) rewards, 43 addresses were eligible for LP rewards last Epoch. This Epoch, there were 47 addresses (30 existing and 17 new ones) that did more than 0.25% in maker volume in the last Epoch, and thus are eligible to participate in LP rewards for Epoch 11. Ever since the formula change last Epoch around how the LP rewards are calculated, we have seen the competition and the pool increase. I think it probably takes a few Epochs for this to fully play out. Clearly, there's a lot of compounding variables with the market more broadly. Generally, I think if you look at the preliminary data, the changes to the LP rewards has resulted in a more competitive dynamic between existing market makers, and so that's overall encouraging.

On the liquidity module side of things, 273 million $USDC were staked at the end of the Epoch from approximately 690 users. At the start of Epoch 11, there's currently about 247 million $USDC actively staked and earning rewards. I guess similar to the past, there are five market makers borrowing capital. It's still likely under-utilized to how much is staked. This is an increasing area of discussion among community members around how to think about this pool and how to potentially optimize or reorganize the liquidity module more broadly.

On the safety module, there's currently 36 million $DYDX staked from 3,000 users. Again we've seen this number increase as the circular needs of $DYDX has increased with stakers locking up their funds for at least a month and having an alternate view to earn additional $DYDX with their existing $DYDX. At the end of the Epoch, there's currently, or assumed to be, 11.29% of the total $DYDX in circulation or considered liquid. This has increased over the last 10 Epochs or so and is now above the 10% threshold required for a long time lock code. So really at this point, the community has the ability to make any changes to the governance contracts and using any type of executor contracts that is available to them.

On the delegate side of things, Josh and the team have been working really closely to really extend our endorsed delegate program. We currently have 11 endorsed delegates. We encourage anyone interested in becoming an endorsed delegate to formally apply. If you don't have time to review proposals, if you think gas is too expensive to go to vote on-chain or you just don't have the time to stay involved within the community, we encourage you to stake your $DYDX to endorsed delegates.

Other updates on the governance side. Last week, we saw a Snapshot vote that was submitted by Reverie, that added five new assets to the smart contract. $APE, $GMT, $FTM, $AXS, and $OP to exchange, had nearly unanimous support from 11 million $DYDX and 477 voters, so really encouraging to see that. Chaos Labs and Reverie have been working to form a new asset listing committee and trying to put together a process to add new markets to the protocol. So excited to see that materialize over the course of this Epoch and certainly nail out a process to reflect community demand and really list the markets and assets the community is interested in treating.

I think other updates from Commonwealth and the forums more broadly, I think it's been really encouraging to see just the breadth and engagement from some of our Ambassadors. They've been proactively shaping discussions on Commonwealth. StarkWhale posted a DRC to improve the current trader rewards mechanism, by replacing the Epoch rewards with time-staked $USDC, to function as a protocol credit line. I encourage everyone to check out that thread. Mx.dydx created the DRC to increase the accountability and transparency of the DGP, having really important questions around accountability and transparency, making sure that all community members are aware of what's going on.

LeMayMay posted a DRC about providing Hedgies-Holders with the opportunity to mint and distribute referral links with the interest in ideas around how to drive growth for Hedgies-Holders and drive growth for the protocol overall. We also saw a proposal from Devin Matthews from the Blockchain at Berkeley team, who is exploring the possibility of adding $cDYDX (compound DYDX) to be staked in the safety module, and thinking about how to drive utility for $DYDX in the broader defined ecosystem. Overall, some really interesting food for thought. We encourage everyone to check out Commonwealth, participate, ask questions, come up with your own proposals and engage in ideation to drive the protocol forward.

A few updates on the Ambassador Program. We at the dYdX Foundation have been working with all of our Ambassadors over the course of season 0. James has done a fantastic job onboarding 17 Ambassadors who are actively contributing to the six burrows: analytics, governance, media, risk analysis, student, and user onboarding. These burrows are really a step in a direction of multiple sub-DAOs with functional alignment with the protocol. It's great to see over the course of season 0 some really awesome output from all of our Ambassadors as we move into season 1. All of our Ambassadors have been actively sharing updates on Discord and on Commonwealth about their plans, and have built some really awesome community tools for people to stay on top of all the things going on. Overall, we’ve been very impressed by the quality of our Ambassador Program and the output that people have started to ship.

On the dYdX Grants Program ("DGP") side, so I think we have hopefully Carl or someone from the DGP on, but they have finalized their funding for grants version one. They've distributed 62 grants with over $2 million in funding and have announced that new grants are currently paused to preserve remaining capital for existing commitments. The DGP is working on a proposal to continue operations and are currently focused on increasing the completion rate for existing grantees and making sure that they provide marketing and showcase all the grants completed over the last few months. So I'm excited to continue to see more grantees execute there and finalize some of the existing grants.

Some updates from the dYdX Trading side over the course of the last Epoch. So obviously, the dYdX Trading team launched the public iOS app. I encourage everyone to check that out if you haven't already. A huge thank you to all beta testers for their time and effort. The product continues to evolve and iterate with user feedback and encourage everyone to continue to post insightful product feedback in the product feedback channel and to other channels more broadly. This Epoch, the dYdX Trading team also announced the self-service affiliate program where affiliates can receive ongoing payments based on trading fees generated by our users. So if you're interested in becoming an affiliate, I encourage you to check that out and start referring users to the protocol. That's the major updates on the trade inside this Epoch.

Lastly, from an administrative standpoint, Epoch 10 ended on June 7th at 15:00 PM UTC. Epoch 10 rewards will be claimable on June 14th at 21:15 UTC, so that's seven days after the end of the Epoch, plus the six-hour delay. Once tokens have been claimed, they can be transferred to the safety module or delegated to the Ambassadors or really anyone else in governance. That’s it on my side. Thanks, everyone.

James (dYdX Foundation): Thanks, David. That was great. We can move straight onto Corey at the dYdX Trading team. Corey, just a few questions for you. Is there any update on V4 that you can share?

Corey (dYdX Trading): We're actually working on a public facing update for V4 that's actually coming out within the next couple of weeks. Definitely stay tuned from that. We're going to be sharing basically all the progress that we've been making, release some more updates on what actually V4 is going to look like to the best extent that we can. Stay tuned for that blog post. Again that'll likely be in the next few weeks.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. I'm really excited for that. In the meantime, are there any new features being launched from a product perspective pre-V4 that users can look forward to?

Corey (dYdX Trading): We’re continuing to work on the current version of the product. Obviously, it's a little bit tough given that we have a certain percentage of the company working on the current version and a certain percentage of the company working on V4. So naturally time spent on new features and such may decrease. We just launched stop market orders. So that's been one of the features that a lot of people are talking about, and that they want it. Next step here is to launch reduce only orders. So that is another one that people have been asking for for a really long time, that we're excited to get out the door.

Once we release that, we’ll be able to build out bracket orders. So again, just trying to focus more on features that a lot of our active traders are asking for. As David mentioned at the start of the call, we'll be adding new markets in collaboration with the community who's voting on these things. Generally, we will continue to build out the current version of the protocol. If there are certain features that you guys want, definitely let us know on Discord. We are reading them, and so we definitely appreciate any product feedback, anything like that. When the community does add feedback to these channels in a really thoughtful manner, we definitely include those for our reason and our write-up.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. That's great. Just to reiterate, guys, if you do want to provide feedback to those channels, then the product feedback channel that's open on the dYdX Trading section of this call, it is worth putting that in. With the state of the crypto market, Corey, how is dYdX navigating this?

Corey (dYdX Trading): Generally, a lot of crypto exchanges are operating similarly to how they were before. Certain key metrics may be decreasing. So as volume on the exchange has gone down, open interest on the exchange has gone down. The core product for dYdX remains the same. We're really operating business as usual in a lot of ways. We're going to continue to focus on the current product. We're going to really continue to focus on V4. We're continuing to experiment and focus on different ways to continue to grow protocol, even during the bear market. We may decrease the amount of money that we spend on some of these promotions and things like that, being a little bit less aggressive in terms of the spending habits of the company, just ensure that we have enough runway to get through a bear market, to get through everything we're going to on V4.

It's very much focusing on the same things. To some degree, we are just becoming even more focused. I think that another thing that happens in bear markets is that a lot of people leave the market. There's less speculation. There's less noise. Then the builders, they put their heads down and started building on the really important things. That seems to be the correction that the whole space is going. I'm pretty optimistic that dYdX will continue operating in the same way. Over the long term, that's just going to lead to more impactful products.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. That's great to hear. Last couple of questions. Is dYdX planning to put out a podcast, what type of content and episodes will this consist of?

Corey (dYdX Trading): Podcast is being worked on. I think we're actually releasing it tomorrow or sometime later this week, the first episode. So this will actually be run for the most part by dYdX Research. So we have a research team that we're building out here. The podcast will really be centered around various things. The first episode is talking to one of our market makers, talking about liquidity, talking about different types of exchanges, where they trade, different trading strategies, things like that. So the podcast itself will very much be trading oriented as well as kind of your everyday podcast.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. That sounds great. Last couple of questions, what events are dYdX planning to attend this year?

Corey (dYdX Trading): That's a good question. We just attended Consensus. So if anyone was there, you might have seen us. Any of the big crypto conferences we usually have some sort of representation. Sometimes it's one or two people. Sometimes it's five to ten people. We have offices in San Francisco and New York. So any conferences there, we'll certainly have attendees at. Other than that, I don't know if we have any concrete plans. We may have some representation at Token 2049, in Singapore later this year. We may have some people at Dev Con potentially. Other than that, I don't know if there's any other conferences that we are fully committed to attending.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks for that, Cory. Then lastly, by 0xCLR, who's in the audience today, is the team able to share any color on the efficiency of liquidations this past Epoch? Was any of the safety pool required? Related to that, has there been any liquidation learnings that the team is going to try and incorporate into the liquidations module?

Corey (dYdX Trading): Yes. So a lot of the liquidation statistics are open. If you go on dydx.exchange you’ll be able to see the metrics of liquidations over the past 30 days. Overall, liquidations have been performing totally fine. We haven't had to dig into any insurance or anything like that. Also, there's an insurance API endpoint. So if you ever want to query the current status of the insurance, you can start that yourself. Liquidations are happening. Unfortunately, this weekend, I think that was the largest amount of liquidations that we had. In terms of the health and safety of the exchange, it's totally fine.

James (dYdX Foundation): Fantastic. Thanks, Corey. David, first question, with V4 approaching, how is the dYdX Foundation viewing DAO structuring?

David (dYdX Foundation): Yeah. That's a good question. Obviously, there's these two discreet time periods. There's this pre-V4 era and then V4 which is still set to launch later this year, at which point the community will have total control over all aspects of a fully censorship-resistant and decentralized open-source protocol. I think in terms of how we view these two discrete sections or time periods, I think with the current version of the protocol, there's going to be a lot that the community has control over. We kind of view this current time in V3 to really be able to run a number of experiments and test a hypothesis around how to run and scale a DAO in the most effective way. I think at least the team's view is that most DAOs out there are not run optimally and don't scale super well.

I think there's a lot of challenges clearly with coordinating sub-DAOs, local talent and making sure that that energy is functionally aligned with really the functional needs of the protocol. For us, we believe in a slightly more progressive approach to DAO structuring and DAO scaling. The Ambassador Program is a step in that direction. I think we had over 2,000 applicants to join the Ambassador Program for season 0. After a rigorous process, we ended up selecting 15 people to really kickstart that process, work out the kinks, figure out tooling and infrastructure for us to scale. This will be an iterative process with experimentation as that process evolves until we launch V4. I think one general principle that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about is really who are the right members for our DAO. How do we really drive a greater alignment between our DAO contributors, our token holders, and ultimately how to track along the lines of our users on the platform?

Ideally, our DAO contributors are actually users of dYdX, the users of the product. They understand the pain points and they want to build in and around the ecosystem and extend that. So overall, trying to figure out how to increase that overlap is something that collectively we're currently focused on. But ultimately, it's really the community's decision on how the DAO gets structured and a number of grantees and community members have shared really interesting research proposals and ideas on Commonwealth. Again, I encourage everyone to continue to view this as an experiment and really the early innings of DAO scaling and really testing these concepts and smaller experiments before really opening the floodgates once V4 launches.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, David. What are the priorities for the dYdX Foundation over the next six months?

David (dYdX Foundation): That's a great question. The dYdX Foundation team has extended pretty significantly in the last 12 months. We're only 12 months old. We have now close to 10 full-time employees and a dozen or so contractors around the world. We're really focused on a number of things. I think a big focus recently has really been trying to drive international growth and really targeting education, marketing, growth campaigns in different markets with different languages around the world, building tooling and infrastructure to really help drive new user acquisition and retention, to drive more users to the protocol ecosystem. So that's been an area of focus number one.

Area of focus number two has really been on activating governance. So we've been supporting and working with multiple partners and community members who have been interested in submitting governance proposals, whether that's rewards optimization research for the trading or LP rewards. Whether it's adding new markets to the protocol, whether it's the DGP or other ways to drive growth. We've been a credibly neutral partner for all community members in helping them navigate the ins and outs of how to participate in governance. A big focus for us has been the endorsed delegates program and really getting tokens into the hands of our most active community members. Again we've onboarded 11 endorsed delegates so far. Generally, it has been encouraging to see the level of engagement from those delegates, both in our forums as well as through voting. I encourage the community to think through how to scale the delegation program, how to get more tokens into the hands of the most engaged community members who are going to be proactively participating in discourse and pushing things forward.

Lastly, an increasing focus does continue to be on DAO structuring. Given the market environment, I think collectively, we want to be thoughtful around how we deploy funds for the community treasury, how we still fund experiments and position ourselves for the V4 launch. I think one shift in thinking that we've been discussing that's encouraged the community to also think about is rather than really hitting all cylinders on growth, given the current environment, I think we're thinking a lot about understanding how to grow and how to structure the DAO in a way that is aggressive but realistic given the overall market sentiment today and really running smaller-scale experiments to be able to get some lessons and insights, so that once that the market turns around, we can really hit all the cylinders and fire it up from there. Those are some of the priority items for the dYdX Foundation. Ultimately, if anyone has any feedback or any questions about that, I'm always happy to chat or feel free to DM anyone from the team.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, David. Can you explain the dYdX Foundation's role once V4 happens? Do they become part of the DAO or do they remain separate? Can you touch on that?

David (dYdX Foundation): That's also a fantastic question. I think ultimately, if you think about the mission of the dYdX Foundation, really our mission is to help foster community-led growth and self-sustainability. The dYdX Foundation is a nonprofit. We don't generate any revenue. Our goal is to foster decentralized governance and empower our users and traders with open, transparent and powerful crypto-financial products. So I think if we're successful at the dYdX Foundation, there’s a world where the dYdX Foundation, frankly, no longer has a purpose anymore. In that end state, it's really when the DAO and the community is fully mature and generally run in a self-sustainable manner. In practice, we definitely have a long way to go before that vision materializes itself. But I think we're confident that we're on that path.

I think once V4 launches later this year, clearly I think we enter into a clear mind shift or just a different landscape when everything is open source. dYdX Trading no longer has the ability to take fees from the protocol and really token holders have full control in decision-making around all aspects of the protocol. So ultimately at that point, it will be up to the community on what the role of the dYdX Foundation will have and how that fits into the DAO landscape more broadly.

Certainly, I would say I'm very proud of the team that we built at the dYdX Foundation. At some point, if the DAO in the community decides to fund the dYdX Foundation, the community, the treasury or to hire some of our employees in other capacities within the ecosystem, I think that end state remains to be seen. Ultimately, it'll be up to our community as to how this will play out. I think for me, I look a lot at the evolution of the Maker Foundation and what happens in the Maker ecosystem as inspiration. I encourage anyone to look at how DAOs and communities evolve over time and look at the multiple endings that may occur. I'm excited to go down this path and journey with everyone.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thank you, David. Can you walk through what the Ambassadors are working on for season 1 in just a broad capacity?

David (dYdX Foundation): Yeah, sure. Ultimately the best source of truth for the Ambassador is the Commonwealth posts that all the Ambassadors have been working on. In the end, I guess just to go through some of the programs and some of the recorded outlets for season 1. For the analytics burrow, the team is focused on building dashboards, Figma design prototyping, posting on Commonwealth, doing some data research on token holders and stakers. For the Governance Burrow, they'll be kicking off a series called Meet the Delegates. This will be a way to showcase endorsed delegates and get more publicity around that. They are focused on adding four new endorsed delegates from the community, putting together guides on POAP forming. They have just onboarded a new Ambassador, AndyGG, putting operational manuals together. They are also trying to encourage research discussions around different changes to governance. The Media Burrow, their focus this season is around building a branding kit that's full of templates and resources for the community to leverage as well as materials for all types of media, value reports, and then supporting the dYdX Foundation and various other Ambassadors with various media initiatives. So this is really focused on driving just a full service of marketing and media initiatives for the protocol. For the Risk Burrow, the Ambassadors are focused on putting together a weekly market commentary and have successfully onboarded a new Ambassador, Jacob. They’re putting together comparative studies for other protocols, tokenomics design research and investigation. They’re also trying to determine different models to involve the community in the asset listing process. For the Student Burrow, they’re focused on the delegate side of things and really leveraging a lot of the university blockchain clubs. Then lastly, the User Onboarding and Education burrow is really the burrow that's been behind the creation of dYdXAcademy.info and dYdXDAO.info. I think both of these resources are really fantastic and are great tools for the community to get up to speed on all the things going on in the ecosystem. I just want to give a major shout-out to the education videos that were published in dYdX Academy. I think these were really fantastic resources produced by one of our community managers, Mo, as well as other grantees. I think producing high-quality video content and trying to onboard new users onto dYdX is probably one of the most impactful things our Ambassadors can do in the next six months.

In addition, User Onboarding and Education burrow is focused on aggregating content, aggregating information on governance and delegation more broadly. They'll be working on education courses, translations and virtual events for current and prospective users. So that gives you just the sense of the breadth of what all of our Ambassadors are working on. Again there's a lot of room for growth here and for more people to get involved. If you have new ideas or thoughts on how the Ambassador Program should be run or are interested in getting involved, there's also a bounty board that has been launched for community members to get involved and really participate in all of these initiatives. So major kudos to James and all of the Ambassadors who have hit the ground running with season 0 and are excited to see all of these plans get executed over the course of season 1 and the next few months or so.

James (dYdX Foundation): Awesome. Thanks, David. Major shout out to all the Ambassadors who have really been heads down building and working on this over the last even two weeks since season 1. They’ve had one week since they've had the operational funding for it. So thanks for all your efforts and hard work there. I know for the Analytics Burrow, there is going to be a space to join the Ambassador Program in that burrow. Starkwhale and team will be posting on Commonwealth later today for a data engineering Ambassador. So anyone here who's got those skills and are interested in applying and becoming an Ambassador, check out Commonwealth later today. The job role and responsibilities will be on there.

I guess we can open up the stage now for the last five, ten minutes for a couple of questions. If anyone wants to ask anything, feel free to raise your hand. We can bring you up.

Niko (Community Member): So my question was about Student Burrow. I don't observe any documented work coming from the Student Burrow. Where can I view this?

James (dYdX Foundation): Yeah. That's a great point. What we are trying to do is foster pure responsibility from these burrows. It's something that has been addressed and that they need to be posting more on Commonwealth. In terms of bounties for what they're doing, a lot of the bounties come from the Ambassadors themselves. They can decide independently within the burrows what they want to give out to community members to complete. At the moment, I think the majority are in POAPs. A few will come out potentially in $DYDX rewards. So keep an eye on that. One thing community members can do as well is post on Commonwealth to inquire about what they're working on and what they are doing. I think a few community members have brought up the lack of transparency there.

That's something that the Governance Burrow is additionally trying to foster. So Niko, it's a great point. I think one thing you can really do to address this is commenting on Commonwealth and really getting responses as to where they are in the season and how they plan to really drive growth in those areas.

Niko (Community Member): In my opinion, communications between the Student Burrow and Educational burrow will be important. Attracting new, prospective users this way will be a real value add. Plus, the youth might bring in new perspectives and interesting ideas for the future of growth of the whole community.

James (dYdX Foundation): I definitely think it needs to be a collaborative approach. I think that's one thing the Ambassador Program tries to foster is very much not an individual game. It's very much cross-collaborating. It's something that I think the Student Burrow specifically definitely needs encouragement and more of. Whether it be with the governance team and/or user onboarding and education team. We’re really trying to drive those student initiatives and bring in new potential university audiences, delegates, etc.

Starkwhale (Community Member): Ambassadors, I think at this point would like to have more engagement with delegation. I feel like some other people are really trying to step up and do what they need to do to be appealing delegates. As we know, the market makers, VC’s and team have out-sized holdings. Who should Ambassadors approach or who should they talk to, to make an effective case for like, "Hey, I'm a good delegate. I want to work with the protocol. I want to better the protocol." I don't think they're always going to get the feedback or maybe the one-on-one discussion that I think some people would like to have to make a personal case on maybe why they're a good delegate and what they should do. So who do they talk to?

David (dYdX Foundation): I think effectively, at least the dYdX Foundation does try to highlight the delegates that do complete all of the disclosures that have been posted on Commonwealth. There's information that we ask each endorsed delegate to provide that provides additional context for potential delegators who want to evaluate things more broadly. We do circulate the list of endorsed delegates to some of the investors. We have seen some investors delegate those stakes that we've seen, average community members also delegate their stakes as well.

I think one point that I would flag and it's maybe a good case study for those involved, I think Max Holloway at Xenophon is a great example of this. He received funding from the grants committee, ended up working on really impactful research around optimizing the rewards system, posted that on Commonwealth and received a lot of feedback and solicitation from various market makers and investors commenting on his threads. He has publicly disclosed that Andreesen Horowitz ended up delegating some tokens to him as a result of that. I think that to me shows the power of building in public and really figuring out how you're uniquely positioned to deliver value for the ecosystem as a whole. I think it's really focusing on the high quantity output and posting that on Commonwealth, trying to show the impact that we drive, and using that as a way to solicit others to delegate tokens to you, I think is like a pretty proven and steady path towards being able to get more tokens.

Starkwhale (Community Member):  I guess if I can interlude for one second, I know that a16z has a form that you can fill out. Can we maybe just encourage other market makers and other people outside to maybe open up their own form? It would only take maybe four to five minutes for them to actually design a form and then put the URL up so that people can approach and have a reference to them, without having to get into the fortuitous position to have some sort of conversation with them. Maybe have a little bit more personal write-up or approachable entry to the people.

David (dYdX Foundation): Yeah. I mean, if you look at the endorsed delegate onboarding questionnaire that is on Commonwealth, that's largely derived from Andreessen’s questionnaire. We've modified it and expanded it a little. The reality is like Andreeson can really work on a bilateral basis with delegates and their network and continue to do that. We know that there are a number of investors who want to delegate their tokens but don't have the same infrastructure or resources that Andreessen does to be able to execute on that. That is a lot of the thinking behind the Endorsed Delegate Program, is really to create a forum for people who are interested in becoming delegates to post that. Then for us at the dYdX Foundation to continue to elevate those people that do meet the requirements and share that proactively with investors, so we do that every Epoch. We have seen some investors delegate tokens as a result of that.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure that a lot of our investors will be interested in direct bilateral agreements with every single community member who wants to receive tokens. I do think the most impactful thing you and others can do who are interested in building up their reputation in the ecosystem is really around building your track record. Figuring out how to stand out as an endorsed delegate, it's really up to you on how much you want to post. Ultimately the proof is in the pudding. How do you stand out versus the next thousand people who want tokens to be delegated to them? I think as an Ambassador, you clearly have a track record and have unique insights. I encourage you to think about how you can display that as publicly as possible.

James (dYdX Foundation): Thanks, Starkwhale. Cool. All right, guys. It's been an hour. We'll close up here. Thanks, everyone, for their time and tuning in again, posting questions and asking the team for the really detailed responses. Keep up the comments and interactions. I think it's really encouraging to see all the support and feedback. This is really valuable and something that both dYdX and dYdX Foundation really pay attention to. Thanks, Corey, David, Josh, and Cliffton for coming onstage and answering the questions.

Let's end on that note. This again will be deciphered and posted as soon as we can. As usual, there's a process involved in the background. But we'll keep you updated as soon as the blog post and YouTube video are up and ready.

Have a great week, everyone. We'll see you next Epoch.