dYdX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) network that provides continuous trading for over 35 prominent cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Cardano (ADA). In terms of trading volume and market share, it is one of the world's largest decentralized exchanges.

The dYdX protocol was created on top of Ethereum smart contracts with Starkware-powered STARK (zero-knowledge) Rollups. The platform began its crypto adventure by offering spot trading and has since relaunched three iterations of its services in order to decentralize its components. To decentralize the exchange, the majority of the dYdX exchange is built on trustless protocols, which are freely expandable by anybody.

History

dYdX is a project that began in July 2017 owing to the efforts of Antonio Julianno, who was working as a developer for Uber and Coinbase at the time. Julianno elected to launch dYdX via the Ethereum network, and so the protocol's history started. dYdX's peculiarity is that, in the midst of the "ICO boom," this project opted to pursue a completely different path: to build from start only via the efforts of its creators. This is how the project began to progress, and it quickly drew the attention of the investment fund A16Z Crypto, which spent 2 million USD in it. Julianno was able to optimize the protocol and showcase his position within the ecosystem thanks to this initial investment.

However, on 18th of August 2020, the history of dYdX altered dramatically. On that day, dYdX began moving its activities to StarkWare's second layer. The goal was to provide faster operation and fewer fees than the Ethereum network. This transaction provided a significant boost to dYdX, helping it to attain a TVL of 60 million USD by December 2020. The coming of 2021, as well as the DeFi boom, had an impact on dYdX. When he performed his first airdrop in August 2021, the creators distributed the token dYdX. On 8th of September 2021, the token was listed on exchanges for the first time.

How does it work

Perpetual futures contracts, also known as perpetual contracts, allow users and investors to place a purchase or sell order at a predetermined price eternally, that is, with no expiry date. This is in contrast to spot trading, which includes selling or purchasing cryptocurrencies on the spot depending on the market price. Traditional futures contracts, on the other hand, include a time restriction on each order, which automatically collapses after the time limit has passed. dYdX is a decentralized exchange that initially hosts perpetual markets but has now expanded to allow spot and margin trading on the Ethereum layer-1 blockchain as well as layer-2 cross-margined perpetuals.

dYdX is a prominent decentralized exchange that provides layer-2 perpetual trading options, nonfungible token (NFT) collections for community development, and a Ropsten Ethereum testnet for projects who want to test their ideas in a risk-free environment. As dYdX pursued its aim of total decentralization over time, the exchange took a gradual approach to delivering additional service offerings. The four main products of the dYdX exchange are perpetual trading, governance, staking, and NFTs.

Total supply and circulation

There are 65,569,295 DYDX coins in circulation, with a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 DYDX coins.