dYdX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) supporting margin trading, spot trading, lending, and borrowing for Ethereum and Ethereum-based digital assets.   
In January 2021, dYdX raised a $10 million Series B round led by Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital.  dYdX will use the funds to add assets and features while expanding to Asian markets.^[1]

Overview

dYdX is a decentralized margin trading platform based on Ethereum. dYdX allows users to borrow, lend and make bets on the future prices of cryptocurrencies. The platform’s features are currently limited to basic trading between ETH, DAI, and USDC, lending assets to collect interest, and two types of margin trading: isolated margin trading and cross margin trading. ^[4]

Isolated margin lets a user leverage one specific asset, while cross margin lets them take out a position using all the assets in their account.^[1]

With dYdX margin trading, lenders automatically earn interest each time a new block is mined. Any funds deposited on the platform will continuously earn interest at every block and can be withdrawn at any time with no minimum requirements. Because all loans are collateralized and face the threat of liquidation, the lender will always be repaid.^[6]

At the start of October 2018, when dYdX was launched, users had locked up just $17 worth of Ethereum-based crypto assets in the dYdX platform in exchange for interest. The Total Value Locked (TVL) has since expanded to more than $140 million. As of January 26, 2021, dYdX ranks sixth among decentralized exchanges (DEXes) in volume across the last 7 days and ninth for users, according to data from Dune Analytics.^[5]

dYdX Perpetual Contracts

In May 2020, dYdX launched Bitcoin (BTC) Perpetual Contracts Market. Perpetual contracts are related to futures contracts, but with no execution date and prices more closely connected to spot market rates. The developers of dYdX noted on May 13, 2020, that the exchange went live for trading.  The BTC-USDC Perpetual offers 10x leverage on BTC with no expiry, and settlement and margining in USDCoin.^[2]

In August 2020m dYdX released ETH-USD perpetual contracts with up to 10x leverage and no expiry. As a part of the rollout, dYdX offered a 50% discount on all trading fees for the first 7 days.^[2]

In August 2020, dYdX announced its partnership with StarkWare to integrate the firm's Layer-2 scaling technology into its perpetual contract offerings. "Our engineering teams are collaborating on a Layer 2 scaling solution for Perpetual Contracts, based on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine and dYdX’s Perpetual smart contracts. Our Perpetual Contracts will be powered by StarkEx by the end of this year," the team said.^[7]

In August 2020, dYdX launched a new perpetual contract product for LINK/USD trading by pulling price data from Chainlink decentralized oracles and enabling users to trade LINK with up to 8x leverage. The dYdX LINK/USD perpetual contracts are generated with a minimum of 12.5% collateral.^[1]

Funding

The company raised 12 million in the initial stage. It includes a $2 million seed round and a $10 million Series A round lead by Paradigm Capital. They are supported by Abstract Ventures, Kindred Ventures, 1confirmation, Elad Gil, and Fred Ehrsam. New investors like Craft Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Naval Ravikant, Kevin Hartz, Dragonfly Capital Partners, and VY Capital also funded dYdX.^[1]

In January 2021, dYdX raised a $10 million Series B round led by Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital with participation from Wintermute, Hashed, GSR, SCP, Scalar Capital, Spartan Group, and RockTree Capital.^[3]

Team

Developers

• Antonio Juliano - Founder
• Brendan Chou - Software Engineer
• Phillip Goldberg - Software Engineer
• Everett Hu - Software Engineer
• Sam Weinberg - Software Engineer
• Ashwini Nene - Software Engineer
• Ken Schiller - Software Engineer
• Achal Srinivasan - Product designer
• Gian Raciti - Head of Recruiting
• Corey Miller - Senior Growth Associate
• Vijay Chetty - Head of Business Development
• David Gogel - Growth Lead

Advisors

• Fred Ehrsam - Co-Founder of Paradigm. Previously co-founder of Coinbase, trader at Goldman Sachs
• Steve Jang - Founder of Kindred Ventures. Advisor to many startups including Uber & Expa
• Reuben Bramanathan - previously Product Counsel & Product Lead at Coinbase
• Barry Kwok - previously Director of Recruiting at Coinbase, Recruiter at Airbnb & Google^[2]