Analysis from the first month of dYdX’s L2 launch

dYdX is one of the longest standing “blue chip” DeFi projects. The protocol first raised a $2 million seed round in December 2017 led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain, with participation from Coinbase founders Fred Ehrsam and Brian Armstrong (among others). This was followed by a $10 million Series A in October 2018, which added Dragonfly Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Craft Ventures to the investor list. 

Prior to the latest version of the protocol launching on zk-Rollups, for increased transaction throughput and lower fees, Three Arrows Capital led another $10 million funding round. The first version of the protocol in October 2018 was for lending and margin trading. In April 2020, BTC perpetual swaps were added. On April 6th, 2021, dYdX launched its Layer 2 deployment built on StarkWare’s zk-Rollups technology.