dYdX V4 Proposal

Wintermute has proposed to dYdX what amounts to the launch of dYdX v4. The proposal includes:

• The adoption of the dYdX Chain.
• Adopting the DYDX token as the L1 token for the new chain.
• The adoption of their autonomous bridge contracts.

There is some debate and confusion around the token migration, however. In early August, the dYdX foundation published a report explaining that if dYdX moves to its own PoS chain, it will require an L1 token for validators to stake to secure and govern the network. After the report, the foundation commissioned a one-way bridge to move dYdX tokens to the new chain. The contract will permanently lock tokens when they send DYDX to this bridge. From there, the contract sends a wrapped DYDX token (wethDYDX) to the user on a 1-1 basis. Eventually, dYdX chain validators can read these token amounts and distribute native dYdX tokens to users. 

The launch of their v4 and chain fundamentally changes the value proposition of the DYDX token, so I recommend people follow this proposal.

Jump Jumping Ship

A short proposal on Lido seems to signal that JumpCrypto is shutting down its Lido validator set. The proposal lays out a plan for Jump to set their ‘targetValidatorsCount’ parameter to 0. Lido will then channel all protocol exits to Jumps validators so that they will eventually have zero validators assigned to them. The proposal estimated that it should take six weeks. However, if the exit takes more than six weeks, the proposal asks that the DAO allow Jump to use the ‘out of order exit’ option to forcefully cycle their stake through the system to wind down their validator set.

This proposal seems like a reaction to the Tornado Cash news from today, which seemed to signal more regulatory headwinds. I have no idea what the news means for staking and PoS, but I recommend following this to see if other sophisticated actors are leaving the space.

Honorable Mentions

• Aave proposes increasing the GHO borrow rate from 1.5% to 2.5%. The proposal aims to help address GHO’s peg deviation and to spur its growth.
• Due to the recent issue around bbaUSD, Balancer proposes paying out fees in USDC.
• Monetalis proposes changes to MakerDAO’s RWA asset allocation. The proposal recommends selling ETF products and putting the ensuing $500M into short-term T-bills.
• Osmosis proposes launching the CosmWasm WBTC contract and recognizing WBTC minted through this contract as Osmosis’s canonical version.
• SafeDAO proposes launching a support organization for their grants platform.