dYdX Foundation Requests $30M Budget, Pledges to Issue Annual Spending Report

The Foundation supporting decentralized crypto exchange dYdX has requested $30 million in funding from the project’s governing decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to be spent over the next three years.

Switzerland-based dYdX Foundation provides legal, R&D, marketing and technical support to the crypto trading project, which includes a perpetual futures contract exchange and specialty blockchain in the Cosmos and Ethereum ecosystems. The Foundation’s goal is to grow dYdX into “the exchange layer of the internet,” according to its pitch.

The budget request is hardly paltry; if honored by dYdX tokenholders (the voters in the DAO), it would award the Foundation 4% of the DAO’s current treasury. At three years long, it would also free the dYdX Foundation from having to submit annual budgets for review and approval, a common practice for other DAOs and their respective foundations.

The request garnered widespread approval from dYdX stakeholders ranging from validators to delegates when the Foundation first shared it last Friday. It will now go to a vote running through February 2.

Nearly half of the requested budget would cover payroll, with 18% going to marketing and growth, 14% to various legal disbursements, and 5.5% to contractors, among other line items.

In a forum post, the Foundation telegraphed its commitment to responsibly managing money through “capital preservation” strategies that reduce risk. It diversified away from USDC and into treasury bonds after last March’s banking crisis-fueled stablecoin de-pegging, perhaps a step away from crypto but one that nonetheless reduced risk and tripled yields.

The Foundation would “diversify” some of the acquired funds “into fiat and stablecoins” and also invest in expanding its staking operation, through which it currently earns staking yield on 2.5 million dYdX tokens. Its $30 million would comprise 10.5 million DYDX tokens and expand the Foundation’s operational runway beyond 18 months.

The Foundation’s next budget request would come “when we approach 18 months of runway” – likely in mid or late 2026 at current projections. In lieu of annual budget votes, the Foundation said it would “aim to issue an annual report and a semi-annual report” that detailed its use of the funds.