Another masterpiece in the field of 'how to spend millions of DAO money so that no one understands what for.'
dYdX Grants Ltd., a company with a name reminiscent of a legal buffer between a fund and common sense, is officially asking for $8 million. Not a pathetic $80,000 for bug bounty, not a couple of hundred for a Gitcoin hackathon in the basement, but 8 million. In DYDX tokens. From the community treasury.
'Probably for something important?' Uh-huh, keep your pockets wide. The goal is 'launching a new grant program', 'supporting developers', 'increasing operational efficiency'.
Let me clarify: this is the very DeFi protocol that fought so fiercely for decentralization last year that it almost decentralized itself into oblivion. Now they are back, asking for a billion cents to give away to others.
Programmers need money. But usually, not someone else's.
Of course, it sounds noble. Helping developers, researchers, community members. Just like in the old movie: 'Money for improving... everything!'
But have you ever seen how such grants are spent? $50,000 - on 'researching tokenomics in ants'. $20,000 - on an NFT collection dedicated to validators. And then, silence, three Medium posts, and a Discord where the last post is from March. This is called 'ecosystem'. In other words - a circular subsidy among friends.
DEP is dead. Long live Grants Ltd.
To give you an idea, there was a program called DEP (dYdX Ecosystem Program) before this. But according to the initiators, it has 'become outdated'. Probably because they already gave away everything they could, and no accountability was introduced. So now everything is new. The same people. The same ideas. Just the structure - fresh and with 'Ltd.' in the name. Very inspiring.
Questions that no one is asking
Why 8 million? Why not 5? Not 3? Not 'whatever is needed along the way'?
Who decides who gets a grant? The eternal committee of DAO brotherhood?
What happens if the result is zero? (Spoiler: nothing. Except for a post on Mirror about 'lessons learned').
Who is monitoring how the funds are spent? Probably the same people who signed this proposal.
dYdX DAO has $228 million in DYDX in the treasury. And someone thought asking for $8 million in grants was modest. Because it's 'only 1.5%'. If you're going to start stealing cookies from the kitchen, start with 1.5%. Mom won't notice. And then there won't be any cookies left.
After all...
Here's a thought: if your 'decentralized' structure can spend $8 million just because someone wrote a nice PDF, maybe it's not that decentralized after all?
And if grants are all that Web3 innovation is capable of in 2025, then we have truly gone far. Just not in the right direction.
Guard your tokens. Because apparently, dYdX will soon come for them with yet another 'initiative'.
