Next Steps For dYdX Ops

Background

The idea behind dYdX Ops Trust (“DOT”) was simple — for the dYdX DAO to function more efficiently, it would need a bank account and provide a playbook for how community members can get involved with the DAO.

That’s because unlike companies, DAOs largely don’t provide contributors with the basic infrastructure they need to get stuff done (e.g., employee credit cards, subscriptions to software like Slack and Discord). In forming the Ops Trust, the goal was to build this basic infrastructure, allowing future DAO contributors to more easily onboard and work on dYdX.

Over the last six months, the DOT team worked hard to do exactly that — we published the dYdX DAO Playbook, formed a legal entity for the Ops Trust and onboarded the entity to a banking partner, and transitioned dYdX to a new forum provider (Discourse).

Thanks to this effort, future contributors to the DAO will now have the infrastructure they need to start working with dYdX’s DAO. Moreover, contributors will be able to form subDAOs of their own using the dYdX DAO Playbook for inspiration.

But DOT is far from finished.

Growing dYdX Ops Trust

Late last year, DYDX tokenholders approved DOT for an initial term of six months. With DOT’s original mission completed and its term ending, there is an opportunity to take it to the next level — staffing it with full-time contributors and giving it a larger budget.

Full-time contributors will give DOT the human resources it needs to meaningfully improve dYdX. A larger budget will fund the full-time contributors, giving DOT the financial resources it needs to find and retain best-in-class talent. In short, there is an opportunity to level DOT up, big-time.

You may be thinking — what exactly is DOT leveling up into? Earlier today, dYdX Foundation published a post exploring potential next steps for the DOT. We think it’s an ambitious development, and if well-executed, can meaningfully improve dYdX. We’re very excited to see a future version of the DOT brought to life by the future stewards of DOT (more on that below).

In the past, we (the Reverie team) did the majority of the work to get DOT into its current position. With DOTs original mission accomplished, we think there is an incredible opportunity for us to step down and make room for other talented contributors to take on the mantle. We’ve always viewed Reverie’s role as helping DAOs go from zero to one — now that dYdX DAO is on sound footing with several active contributors, we feel comfortable we can step away from the day-to-day of running DOT to make room for talented, full-time contributors. While we don’t intend to hold any formal role at the DOT once its current term expires, we’ll of course help out informally if anyone needs help.

What Happens Next?

Once the DOT’s term expires on June 19th, Reverie will formally retire from its role on DOT. In parallel, it will be important for the DOT to do two things: (i) recruit a full-time team to execute on the DOTs exciting new vision, and (ii) come up with a tactical plan and budget and share this plan/budget for community feedback.

Recruiting a full-time team for the DOT will be incredibly important. To that end, we’d recommend the process be spearheaded by dYdX Foundation and DOT’s current trustees, Joanna and Callen. We think all of these individuals are very capable and can do the job well. Having said that, we’d welcome the community to offer feedback on what it thinks the process for recruiting a team in place for the DOT should be. In any case, to avoid any perceived independence concerns, we (Reverie) will sit out from the recruitment process.