Layer 1 blockchain
dYdX Chain ticker DYDX
Summary
Proof-of-stake chain running the dYdX v4 application on the Cosmos SDK with CometBFT consensus. Validators bond DYDX (bond denomination adydx, 21-day unbonding). A block commits once validators holding at least two thirds of voting power sign it. Each validator and full node keeps its own in-memory order book: orders are gossiped off consensus, the block proposer matches them locally and puts the resulting fills into its proposed block, and only fills and order state changes are committed. Validators also run an oracle sidecar and submit prices through vote extensions, which the proposer aggregates. Governance has narrowed who produces blocks: the active set is capped at 21 validators since September 2026, and only eight governance-appointed designated proposers propose blocks. 18171920213539
Design
- System
- Layer 1 blockchaindYdX Chain (chain ID dydx-mainnet-1) is its own proof-of-stake chain built with the Cosmos SDK and CometBFT, secured by validators staking DYDX. It is not an Ethereum Layer 2 and does not borrow Cosmos Hub security. It is an application-specific chain: its modules run a perpetuals order book, margin, liquidations and oracle prices rather than a general contract runtime. The earlier dYdX v3 exchange was shut down in October 2024, and the Ethereum-to-dYdX Chain token bridge was closed by governance in 2025. The package table's Layer 1 label is kept.
- Settlement family
- Cosmos SDK
- Scarce resource
- Stake (proof of stake)
- State model
- Accounts
- Finality
- Other
- Who makes blocks
- Eight designated proposers appointed by on-chain governance (last changed by proposal 368, passed 27 March 2026), taking turns weighted by voting power. The wider active set, capped at 21 by proposal 396 (passed 17 September 2026), still votes on every block. The designated-proposer feature arrived in software v9.0 in 2025 and has been in force since late September 2025.
- Fork choice
- No fork choice in the Nakamoto sense: a height is decided by at least two thirds of voting power precommitting one block. Conflicting commits would need at least one third of voting power to double-sign; on 27 September 2026 the chain's slashing settings took no stake for double-signing or for downtime, so such misbehaviour would cost validators no bonded DYDX. If more than one third is offline, or all designated proposers are offline or jailed, the chain halts rather than forks.
Qualifications
- Shared security · Not applicable. dYdX Chain is secured by its own validators bonding DYDX; the chain's staking parameters name adydx as the bond denomination. Being a Cosmos SDK chain does not make it secured by the Cosmos Hub.
- Slashing · Partial. On 27 September 2026 the chain's slashing settings took no stake for double-signing or for downtime. Safety still assumes at least two thirds of voting power is honest, but a violation would cost validators no bonded DYDX.
- Finality · Partial. A block is final once at least two thirds of voting power precommits it, and blocks do not reorganise in normal operation. This profile does not count that as finality backed by stake, because the slashing settings take no stake for double-signing; reverting a committed block would cost validators no bonded DYDX.
- Ibc · Applies. IBC connects dYdX Chain to other chains through on-chain light clients. Its main use is bringing in USDC issued on Noble. It is interchain messaging between sovereign chains, not a rollup, and is recorded under bridge support.
- Order matching · Partial. Order books live in each node's memory and can differ between nodes; the proposer matches orders and only the resulting fills are committed. Placement and cancellation of short-term orders are therefore not final until an order fills or its block-height expiry passes.
- Decentralization · Contested. Block proposing is limited to eight governance-appointed validators and the active set is capped at 21. Proposers present this as performance tuning under governance control; when the MEV Committee proposed the March 2026 cut, forum replies, including one from a validator, objected that validators were leaving because they earned almost nothing. The proposer set can be changed only by a governance vote.
- General smart contracts · Not applicable. The chain's application code on GitHub, which lists the modules the chain runs, includes no contract virtual machine (no CosmWasm or EVM module was found on 27 September 2026). Features are fixed modules changed by software upgrades.
- Tps · Unknown. No transactions-per-second figure was found or recorded. The only sourced number is an order-intake load test, classified separately as a benchmark.
Tradeoffs
- Emphasizes
- Scalability
- Gives up
- Decentralization of block production and node operation, and stake-backed security. Only eight governance-chosen validators propose blocks, the active-set cap was lowered in stages to 50 in mid-2025 and to 21 in September 2026, a full node is specified at 16 cores and 64 GiB RAM, and the order book lives in each node's memory, where a proposer sees pending orders before they are final. On 27 September 2026 the slashing settings took no stake for double-signing or downtime.Scalability here means low latency and high order flow for one trading application, not general capacity. Security is not listed as a design emphasis because no stake penalty backs the two-thirds honesty assumption; readers who count immediate BFT finality as a security emphasis may reasonably disagree. A March 2026 governance post says block times fell from about 1 second to about 600 milliseconds under designated proposers; that is not an independent measurement. On 27 September 2026 the four largest of 21 bonded validators held about 37% of bonded stake.
- Full node at home
- Demanding 345dYdX's hardware page lists a 16-core x86_64 processor, 64 GiB RAM and 500 GiB of locally attached SSD for a node, giving an AWS r6id.4xlarge as an example. The required configuration uses aggressive pruning (keep the 7 most recent states). Validators must also run an oracle sidecar. Snapshots and state sync come from community providers such as Polkachu, KingNodes and Enigma. Chain growth and bandwidth needs were not documented.
- Throughput claims
- Lab benchmark: 1,500 23Controlled benchmark; not observed network behavior.Orders per second accepted from one self-hosted full node in dYdX's load testing; not settled trades or transactions.Not stated in the FAQ answer; the separate hardware page specifies 16 cores, 64 GiB RAM and 500 GiB SSD.An order submitted is not a trade: most orders are placed and cancelled without filling, and only fills reach consensus. The FAQ gives no test date, network conditions, order mix or method, so it cannot be reproduced or compared across chains. The figure ignores propagation to the current proposer, which the FAQ itself says drives latency, and says nothing about state growth or spam load.
Scaling layers
No scaling layer recorded in this profile.
Capabilities
| Capability | How it is provided | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Account abstraction | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Atomic swaps | Unknown | Not yet assessed under the current definitions; no hash-time-locked or other cross-party swap mechanism was found. The block proposer puts order-book fills in its proposed block, and they take effect when validators with two thirds of stake commit it, but those fills open, change or close perpetual futures positions: the two traders do not exchange assets, so they are not counted as a swap. Whether two parties could exchange tokens in one jointly signed transaction was not reviewed. 16 |
| Authenticated data publication | Not present | No feature was found through which a publisher posts data for others to find against a chain-recorded commitment, retrieve and check. The nearest feature, the indexer, is a read-only database service fed by a full node; it serves the chain's own state, which does not count as publication. 1 |
| Light clients | Built into the protocolLimited scope | CometBFT consensus produces the validator-signed commits that IBC light clients check, and dYdX Chain runs on-chain light clients of counterparties such as Noble. Limits: clients expire without updates, and governance recovered an expired Injective client in May 2025; release v9.1 fixed a v9.0 change that made counterparties' light clients see mismatched validator-set hashes. 14161822 |
| Native staking or delegation | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| On-chain governance | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Parallel execution | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Payment or state channels | Unknown | No payment or state channel layer anchored to dYdX Chain was found. IBC channels are messaging paths, not payment channels. 18 |
| Programmable spending | Partial (layer not stated) Earlier definition | Accounts can attach authenticators (signature checks, allowed message types, subaccount and market filters, combined with all-of or any-of rules), so a second key can be limited to certain actions such as placing orders. This is fixed-function logic, not scripts or general contracts. 7 |
| Protocol-verified messaging | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Reversible transfers or recovery | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
| Rollups | Unknown | No source was cited for absence, so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown rather than not present. Earlier finding: no rollup settling to dYdX Chain was found in the reviewed sources, and absence was not exhaustively verified. |
| Shielded transfers | Structured assessment pending | Not yet assessed for any chain. |
| Signed partial offers | Unknown | Not yet assessed under this row's current definition. |
Reading these values
- How this feature is provided
- Built into the protocol, core-team software or independent software says where a feature lives and who can change it. These are implementation layers, not quality: core-team software is not closer to the protocol than independent software.
- Structured assessment pending
- The shared review has not assessed this feature for any chain yet (Account abstraction, Native staking or delegation, On-chain governance, Parallel execution, Protocol-verified messaging and Shielded transfers). That does not mean it is absent, and a chain’s profile may already describe it.
- Unknown
- The review has not established this for this chain under the current definition; the note beside it says why. Unknown is not absent and not a low score. A feature reads “Not present” only when a source shows it is absent.
- Earlier definition
- Payment or state channels, Programmable spending and Rollups keep the earlier definition until the next fact-check. There, “Native” does not separate the protocol from core-team software, “Ecosystem software” does not say who publishes it, and “Partial” does not say which layer.
- Reading across rows
- The list of capabilities is incomplete. Do not read these rows as a chain leading or lagging overall.
Ecosystem & custody
| Product type | Status | Notes and sources |
|---|---|---|
| Automated market makers | None found | Trading runs on the protocol's own order book, not a pool. MegaVault's sub-vaults placed automated quotes in that book (dYdX's docs call these AMM strategies). In December 2025 governance removed its operator, set existing sub-vaults to close-only and set the default number of quote layers to zero. On 27 September 2026, 186 of 195 sub-vaults were close-only with no open positions and the other nine used the zero-layer default, so none was quoting. The docs page still describes an elected operator. 69243738 |
| Issuer-native stablecoins | None found | USDC, the collateral asset, arrives over IBC from Noble; the chain registry traces it to Noble's uusdc. Circle's USDC list includes Noble but not dYdX Chain, and Circle's transfer protocol list does not include dYdX Chain. 142627 |
| Algorithmic stablecoins | Unknown | The review did not verify absence (the completeness of the registry list was not verified), so the rule that absence needs a source makes this unknown rather than not present. Earlier finding: the chain registry lists only DYDX and two USDC representations, and no algorithmic or hybrid stablecoin was found. 14 |
| Bridges | Native to the protocolIBC (USDC from Noble), Skip Go, Skip Go Fast | The documented routes are direct IBC transfers, Coinbase through Noble, Skip Go routes from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, Avalanche, Solana and Cosmos chains, and Skip Go Fast, where solvers front funds. The chain registry traces the main USDC to Noble over IBC. The Ethereum-to-dYdX Chain DYDX bridge was disabled by governance in 2025. Risk: IBC security depends on each counterparty chain's validators and correct light-client operation. USDC on dYdX Chain is only as sound as Noble and the IBC path. Skip Go Fast relies on third-party solvers and Skip's settlement messaging, whose security was not reviewed. Governance-set hourly and daily withdrawal limits and automatic pauses after outages can delay exits. 101112141823 |
| Block explorers | Established in the ecosystemMintscan, staking-explorer.com, ezstaking, NodeStake, TC Network, Valopers, moon-runners | dYdX's node resources page links Mintscan; the chain registry lists the others. Listing is not a quality or completeness check, and explorer data is provider-indexed. 51331 |
| Hardware wallets | Established in the ecosystemLedger | See custody rows: Ledger's page describes dYdX Chain and offers it in Ledger Wallet; Trezor says it does not support dYdX Chain and lists only the Ethereum token version. 282930 |
Hardware-wallet custody
| Device maker | Status | What users can and cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | Native supportSame as native: Unknown | Can: Add a dYdX account in Ledger Wallet (Ledger Live), per Ledger's dYdX Chain page Can: Stake DYDX from Ledger Live, which the page advertises Cannot: Find on Ledger's page which dYdX operations (governance votes, subaccount transfers, order placement) the device supportsLedger's page describes dYdX Chain as a Cosmos SDK proof-of-stake network and offers account management and staking in Ledger Live, but it names no device app and lists no supported operations, so which dYdX Chain operations a Ledger device supports was not confirmed. 28 |
| Trezor | None foundSame as native: No | Cannot: Manage native dYdX Chain accounts through Trezor, which states it does not support dYdX Chain Cannot: Use the Ethereum token version Trezor does support to reach native DYDX through the official bridge, which governance closed in 2025Trezor's separate dYdX page lists Ethereum as the supported network, meaning the older ERC-20 token, not the chain's native asset. Third-party signing paths were not checked. 232930 |
Public data
iKnow Blockchain has no public-data lookups for dYdX Chain yet. This is a limit of the service, not a statement about the network.
| Lookup | Status | What it covers and its limits |
|---|---|---|
| Address or account | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Tokens and assets | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| NFTs | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
| Transactions | Not available yet | Public-data lookups for this chain are not built yet. |
Sourced developments
Developments: Review overdue Reviewed Sep 27, 2026; next review was due Oct 7, 2026, 12:00 UTC.
Publication date · newest first
-
Governance cut the active validator set to 21
Proposal 396 lowered the maximum number of active validators from 31 to 21. The forum post behind it said only 29 of 31 slots were filled (a later passage says 30) and the ten validators ranked 22 to 31 held about 5.4% of active stake. Block proposing stays with the eight designated proposers.
- Proposal:passed 17 September 2026
- Implementation:parameter change executed on-chain
- Release:no software release required
- Activation:maximum of 21 validators observed on 27 September 2026
Sources: Allnodes public REST endpoint for dydx-mainnet-1 — Governance proposal 396: Reduce the active validator set to 21 (external site) · dYdX Forum — [DRC] Reduce Active Set to 21 (external site) · Allnodes public REST endpoint for dydx-mainnet-1 — dYdX Chain staking parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
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Release v9.7.1 makes nodes turn away short-term orders from subaccounts below the collateral floor
protocol/v9.7.1 restores a check that an earlier change had removed. When a node first screens a new short-term order (the CheckTx step), it now rejects the order if the subaccount’s net collateral falls in an equity tier that allows no open orders. Reduce-only orders stay allowed so a position can still be closed, and cancellations are not gated. The pull request says mainnet’s settings already put this floor at $20, and that the change is not consensus-breaking, so operators install it one node at a time with no upgrade proposal.
- Proposal:none required; the pull request describes a rolling upgrade without an upgrade handler
- Implementation:fix merged 14 September 2026 (pull request 3392)
- Release:released as protocol/v9.7.1 on 14 September 2026
- Activation:takes effect per node as operators install it; how many nodes run v9.7.1 was not checked
Sources: dydxprotocol maintainers — protocol/v9.7.1 release notes (external site) · dydxprotocol maintainers — Pull request 3392: fix(clob): enforce short-term order equity tier in CheckTx (external site)
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Release v9.7 moves settled isolated-market insurance funds into the main fund and narrows what governance can transfer
protocol/v9.7.0 is a governance-scheduled upgrade from v9.6.4. At the upgrade, insurance fund balances of isolated markets that had already reached final settlement move into the main cross-market insurance fund, and later isolated-market settlements do this automatically. It removes MsgSendFromAccountToAccount, a governance-only transfer message added in v9.5 that the developers say no proposal ever used. It also stops governance-set transfers, vesting and rewards from drawing on the staking pools or the module account that holds subaccount collateral. The dYdX Operations subDAO proposed block 105,000,000 on 11 September 2026, and a validator reported submitting the vote as proposal 395.
- Proposal:forum draft 6 September 2026; a validator reported on-chain proposal 395 on 7 September; vote result not read in this pass
- Implementation:changes merged 3 September 2026 (pull requests 3384 and 3386) with a v9.7 upgrade handler
- Release:released as protocol/v9.7.0 on 6 September 2026, after a release candidate on 5 September
- Activation:not confirmed on-chain in this pass; planned for block 105,000,000 on 11 September 2026; chain registry recommended v9.7.0 on 27 September 2026
Sources: dydxprotocol maintainers — protocol/v9.7.0 release notes (external site) · dydxprotocol maintainers — Pull request 3389: Backport v9.7 changes to release/protocol/v9.x (external site) · dydxprotocol maintainers — Pull request 3384: Sweep isolated insurance funds to the cross insurance fund and remove MsgSendFromAccountToAccount (external site) · dydxprotocol maintainers — Pull request 3386: Block protected module accounts as transfer sources in sending, vest, and rewards (external site) · dYdX Community Forum (post by dYdX Operations subDAO) — [DRC] Proposal for dYdX Protocol Upgrade to v9.7 (external site) · Cosmos chain-registry maintainers — dYdX chain registry record (external site)
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Release v9.6.4 fixed a flaw where an order with a bad builder address could halt the chain
protocol/v9.6.4 carries the fixes for security issue SEC-76. Nodes now reject orders whose builder address (the address an order names to receive a builder fee) is invalid or belongs to a blocked module account, and they skip any such stored order when loading orders into the order book. The pull request says these orders could otherwise cause a crash during fee transfer, and its end-to-end test treats the case as a chain halt. The release also makes two permissioned-key filters, which limit a key to chosen markets or subaccounts, refuse message types they do not recognise instead of letting them through.
- Proposal:no governance proposal named in the release or pull request
- Implementation:SEC-76 fixes merged 20 August 2026 (pull request 3380)
- Release:released as protocol/v9.6.4 on 26 August 2026
- Activation:rollout method and timing not stated; the v9.7 upgrade names v9.6.4 as its starting version (inference that validators ran it)
Sources: dydxprotocol maintainers — protocol/v9.6.4 release notes (external site) · dydxprotocol maintainers — Pull request 3380: Port SEC-76 fixes to main (external site) · dydxprotocol maintainers — Pull request 3389: Backport v9.7 changes to release/protocol/v9.x (external site)
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dYdX Labs launched Arcus on Robinhood Chain and said dYdX v4 stays supported
dYdX announced Arcus, a decentralized exchange built jointly by dYdX Labs and Robinhood Crypto that runs on Robinhood Chain, which the post describes as an EVM-compatible Layer 2 built by Robinhood. The post said spot trading was live and opened a waitlist for perpetuals. It also said dYdX v4 will continue to be supported and that funds and positions remain accessible on dYdX Chain.
- Implementation:Arcus described as launched in the announcement
- Release:launched per the announcement: spot trading live, perpetuals on a waitlist
- Activation:not a dYdX Chain protocol change
Source: dYdX — A new arc (external site)
-
dYdX Chain halted for about eight hours after a liquidation edge case
During extreme volatility on 10 October 2025, an ordering error in isolated-market liquidation logic made a collateral pool show a negative balance, and the protocol's safety stop halted the chain from about 5:35 PM ET until 1:41 AM ET on 11 October. Validators installed a patch to restart. Governance later approved paying 462,097.79 USDC from the insurance fund to affected users.
- Proposal:compensation proposal passed 1 November 2025
- Implementation:patch developed and installed by validators
- Release:Released
- Activation:chain restarted 11 October 2025
Sources: dYdX — October 2025 dYdX Chain incident review and community update (external site) · Allnodes public REST endpoint for dydx-mainnet-1 — Governance proposal 301: Compensate impacted Oct 10 incident users from Insurance Fund (external site)
Topics your AI can explain
Your AI can explain these topics for dYdX Chain through the connection, with sources.
Known gaps
What this profile's review did not establish:
- Bonded stake, its split across validators and the slashing settings were read once, on 27 September 2026, from one public node; no history or independent concentration index was captured.
- Block time is taken from a governance forum post (about 600 milliseconds) and the next-block delay parameter, not an independent measurement.
- Chain data size, growth rate and bandwidth needs for a full node are not documented; only minimum hardware was found.
- Ledger's dYdX Chain page names the chain but no device app; governance voting and subaccount operations from a Ledger were not confirmed.
- Third-party hardware signing paths (for example browser wallets paired with Trezor) were not checked.
- MegaVault's settings were read once, on 27 September 2026; a later governance vote could turn quoting back on.
- Who operates the public indexer at indexer.dydx.trade and the dydx.trade front end was not confirmed.
- No atomic-swap mechanism, reversible or delayed transfer or recovery feature, or channel layer was found; absence was not exhaustively verified. Order-book fills change perpetual positions rather than exchange assets, so they are not counted as swaps.
- The security and settlement model of Skip Go and Skip Go Fast was not reviewed.
- The dYdX Foundation website returned HTTP 403 and was not used.
Sources
Oldest dated source check: Source checked Sep 27, 2026 Next check due Oct 27, 2026.
- Architecture overview (external site)
- Onboarding FAQs (external site)
- Hardware requirements (external site)
- Required node configs (external site)
- Node resources (external site)
- Limit order book and matching (external site)
- Authenticators (external site)
- Oracle prices (external site)
- MegaVault (external site)
- Deposits and withdrawals overview (external site)
- Skip Go Fast deposits (external site)
- Withdrawal limits (external site)
- dYdX chain registry record (external site)
- dYdX asset list (external site)
- protocol/v9.0.0 release notes (external site)
- protocol/v9.1.0 release notes (external site)
- Byzantine Consensus Algorithm (external site)
- IBC overview (external site)
- dYdX Chain staking parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
- Governance proposal 396: Reduce the active validator set to 21 (external site)
- Governance proposal 368: Appoint New Designated Proposer Set (external site)
- Governance proposal 242: IBC light client update for Injective (external site)
- Governance proposal 259: Final Cessation of Support for the wethDYDX Smart Contract (the Bridge) (external site)
- Governance proposal 328: Remove Megavault Operator and Set Params (external site)
- [DRC] Appoint New Designated Proposer Set (external site)
- USDC contract addresses (external site)
- CCTP supported blockchains (external site)
- dYdX Wallet (external site)
- dYdX Chain wallet (external site)
- dYdX wallet (external site)
- Mintscan dYdX explorer (external site)
- Reminder: ethDYDX to DYDX Bridge Ends June 9, 2025 (external site)
- [DRC] Reduce Active Validator Set to 42 (external site)
- [DRC] Reduce Active Set to 31 (external site)
- dYdX Chain slashing parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
- dYdX Chain bonded validator list (on-chain query) (external site)
- dYdX Chain vault list with status and inventory (on-chain query) (external site)
- dYdX Chain vault default quoting and operator parameters (on-chain query) (external site)
- Governance-controlled path to reliability and performance (external site)
- dYdX v4-chain application wiring (protocol/app/app.go) (external site)
Report an error
Found something wrong or out of date? Reporting is free, and every chain goes through the same process. Published corrections appear in the public log.
Funding disclosure
Funding disclosures appear here when an upkeep arrangement exists, in the form “Upkeep funded by [name]; verdicts unaffected.” The funder ledger has not been published yet. Neutrality & funding