dYdX (DYDX)

dYdX (DYDX) is the native token of the dYdX Chain, a blockchain built for a single purpose: running a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures. DYDX is staked by the validators that operate the chain, used to vote on how the exchange is run, and, since 2025, bought back with part of the trading fees the protocol earns.

The name covers several things. dYdX is the exchange software, first built by the company now called dYdX Labs; the dYdX Chain is the network it runs on; and DYDX is the token. The exchange began on Ethereum and moved in 2023 to its own chain built with the tools of the Cosmos ecosystem. Its closest rivals are Hyperliquid and GMX.

A perpetual future is a bet on whether a price will go up or down, with no end date, and it lets a trader borrow to make the bet larger. dYdX offers these trades through an order book, the same list of buy and sell offers a stock exchange uses, but with no company holding customers' money. Traders keep control of their funds and the matching is done by the network itself.

To make that fast enough, dYdX built its own road rather than sharing a crowded motorway. The dYdX Chain does almost nothing except run the exchange, so trades are not stuck in traffic behind games, tokens and other applications. DYDX is the toll-road company's share: owners help keep the road open and vote on its rules.

Antonio Juliano founded dYdX in 2017. Its first products, on Ethereum, offered margin trading and lending. In 2021 the exchange moved its perpetuals business to a layer 2 network built with StarkWare, a version known as v3, which cut costs but still relied on a central matching engine run by the company. The DYDX token launched in September 2021 as an Ethereum token with a total supply of 1 billion, part of it airdropped to past users.

In 2022 the team announced it would leave Ethereum for its own chain, an example of the appchain model. The dYdX Chain, called v4, went live in October 2023 with a fully decentralized order book: validators hold the book in memory and agree only on matched trades. Holders moved their tokens across through a bridge, and the older v3 exchange was later closed. In November 2024 an upgrade known as dYdX Unlimited let anyone list a new market and added a shared liquidity vault, MegaVault.

The dYdX Chain uses proof of stake. Validators lock up DYDX, and holders can delegate their tokens to them, earning a share of the trading fees, which are paid in USDC rather than in newly created tokens. Staked DYDX also carries votes in the chain's on-chain governance, which sets fees, lists markets and controls the community treasury.

In March 2025 the community began a programme to buy DYDX on the open market with 25 percent of net protocol fees and stake the purchased tokens. In November 2025 a governance vote raised that share to 75 percent:

• $\text{Net fees}$ is the protocol's trading fee income after rebates and costs for the period.
• $0.75$ is the 75 percent share approved in November 2025.
• $\text{Buyback}$ is the amount spent buying DYDX.

For example, if net fees in a month were 4 million dollars, $4{,}000{,}000 \times 0.75 = 3{,}000{,}000$, so 3 million dollars would go to buying DYDX. Under the earlier 25 percent rule the same month would have funded 1 million dollars of purchases.

For most of its life dYdX blocked users in the United States and other restricted countries from trading perpetuals, because leveraged derivatives open to retail traders fall under rules such as those of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In December 2025 dYdX Labs launched spot trading, starting with Solana tokens, and opened that product to US users for the first time, while perpetuals stayed unavailable to them. Because the chain itself is run by independent validators, regulators and the protocol's supporters still disagree over who is responsible for compliance on a decentralized exchange.

• Lost ground. dYdX was the leading on-chain derivatives exchange in 2021, but its share of volume has since been overtaken by Hyperliquid and others.
• Token supply. Large allocations to investors and early contributors were released over several years, adding selling pressure, and DYDX has traded far below its 2021 peak.
• Leverage. Traders can be liquidated quickly, and thinly traded markets listed under the permissionless model can be easier to manipulate.
• Bridge and chain risk. Moving to a stand-alone chain means DYDX relies on a smaller validator set than Ethereum does, and assets bridged in carry their own risks.
• Value of buybacks. Buyback programmes only matter if trading volume and fees hold up.

• dYdX
• dYdX Foundation
• dYdX documentation