DOS 2023 Spending Update

In 2023 the DOS has spent a total of 679.6k USDC. As you can see in the monthly breakdown this is not evenly distributed but is strictly correlated to the launch of the trading front end as well as the dYdX Chain infrastructure pieces we support (IBC Relayers, Archival Nodes and AML Checking provider) going live.

The largest expense of the DOS by far, as expected, is the Indexer, making the data of the dYdX Chain readily available in a easily searchable format requires a lot of AWS storage and compute which is expensive. Although this is a lot it is less than we had expected and than what was originally budgeted, since we are still experiencing and definitely also hoping for increased usage of the exchange we are prepared for this number to grow.

After core contributor cost the legal fees are the third largest expense of the DOS, during the setup process there were a lot of legal questions and workstreams that required input from different law firms in different jurisdictions (such as: Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, AML Policy, Risk Management Policy etc. ). We expect this to slowly taper off in 2024 since a lot of the processes are established now and workstreams concluded, but as the space develops quickly we want to be prepared to continuously need legal guidance to navigate the difficult regulatory environment.

In conclusion we wanted to mention again that we are working with our accounting provider to create a dashboard enabling a more detailed and day by day overview of the dYdX Operations subDAO financials. Stay tuned for that. If you have any questions in the meantime please reach out.