Announcing the Launch of Full Trading on the dYdX Chain

The dYdX Operations subDAO is pleased to announce the launch of Full Trading on the dYdX Chain, introducing new and improved trading rewards, a 6-month Launch Incentive Program proposed by Chaos Labs, and the continuation of Validators and Stakers receiving 100% of protocol fees. Full trading has been enabled by the dYdX Community voting to first move from the Alpha to Beta stage then move from the Beta Stage to Full Trading. BTC-USD, ETH-USD, SOL-USD, and LINK-USD markets are available for full production trading. Over the coming weeks more markets could continue to be added.

On November 28, 2023, the dYdX community supported progressing from the Beta Stage to Full Trading by activating Trading Rewards and the 6-month Launch Incentive Proposal. Staking rewards will continue to accrue to Validators and Stakers. Since the launch of the Beta stage, over 1.86M total trading volume has been generated on the platform, with approximately 14k trades and over $1,080 USDC distributed to Validators and Stakers.

The 6-month incentive program created by Chaos Labs and approved by the dYdX community through dYdX governance will see $20M worth of DYDX get distributed to early adopters of the dYdX Chain for the first 6-months of Full Trading. Users of the dYdX Chain will qualify to receive rewards for performing certain actions on dYdX Chain. Chaos Labs has focused on a robust reward distribution, designed to amplify dYdX Chain adoption, trading volume, and reward early adopters of the dYdX Chain. Chaos Labs will implement wash trading modules to detect wash trading on the dYdX Chain and won’t reward negative or abusive behaviors. Users will be able to see their rewards via a dYdX Chain Rewards Leadership Portal. Note, each distribution of DYDX rewards under the 6 month Launch Incentives Program is subject to approval from the dYdX Community via a dYdX governance proposal.

To migrate from Ethereum to the dYdX Chain, ethDYDX token holders use the permissionless and autonomous one-way bridge, the wethDYDX Smart Contract, to permanently lock their ethDYDX tokens in exchange for wethDYDX on Ethereum and DYDX, the L1 token that powers the dYdX Chain. There are currently over 437 million ethDYDX bridged and 16.44M DYDX staked to the dYdX Chain.

The Full Trading Stage of the dYdX Chain succeeds the Alpha and Beta Stages, which focused on security, stability, platform reliability and functionality before enabling Full Trading.

The focus of the Alpha Stage was stability and security of the network. Stability and security primarily come from (1) the amount of staked (also referred to as ‘bonded’) tokens to the network and (2) smooth operation of the consensus algorithm.

In the Beta Stage, a protocol front-end and an indexer were deployed to offer a trading experience for users, test trading functionality and introduce 33 unique markets. Staking rewards were enabled during the Beta Stage but no trading rewards were enabled.

About dYdX Operations subDAO

The dYdX Operations subDAO (https://www.dydxopsdao.com/) current mandate is to support community engagement, deployment and maintenance of an indexer for the dYdX Chain and deploy, maintain and operate a Frontend User Interface for the dYdX Chain.