Introduction

Today we are excited to announce the release of the v5.0 software update for dYdX Chain. V5.0 brings some of our most impressive and monumental upgrades since Chain launch including:

Isolated Markets & Isolated Margin
Protocol-enshrined LP Vault
Slinky Sidecar and Raydium Integrations
Batch Order Cancellation
Signature Verification Parallelization
Soft Open Interest Cap
Full Node Streaming

Let’s dive into the details for each new update.

Isolated Markets

Isolated Markets is arguably the most exciting change coming in the new v5.0 upgrade. Previously, the dYdX Chain only permitted markets that were cross margined at a protocol level–meaning that every market shared the same collateral pool and insurance fund. This design has been integral to the overall risk properties of the software but as a result the universe of available markets on any deployment of dYdX has been constricted.

With Isolated Markets, each market has its own collateral pool and insurance fund, which protects the solvency and functionality of the protocol as a whole from volatility in any one market. In the past, many markets have not been recommended as compatible with optimal performance of dYdX Chain because of their potential to destabilize the protocol. With the introduction of isolated markets, 800+ new markets will be available to list via governance vote in the new markets widget.

We’re incredibly excited about this update as it unlocks a massive amount of new markets for traders. See the full details of this new update on our github.

Isolated Margin

Isolated margin allows for traders to trade any market as an isolated position. Previously, from a trader’s perspective, all positions were cross-margined against one another. With isolated margin, traders have the ability to confine collateral to a specific position and manually adjust the collateral for that given position. We believe this will allow users to more intuitively understand and adjust their collateral management.

LP Vaults

With potential new markets comes the question of liquidity. LP (Liquidity Provider) Vaults allow for users to provide automated liquidity strategies on protocols using dYdX Chain software. LP vaults enable anyone to provide automated liquidity on the protocol simply by depositing USDC into a liquidity vault. The USDC in the LP vault will be used to automatically provision liquidity on both sides of the orderbook. LPing into vaults is permissionless and non-custodial with the goal of increasing liquidity on all markets.

In this release, LP vaults will be established on the protocol layer but will not be available yet for traders via the frontend. We anticipate full usage of LP vaults to be available for traders in the coming weeks. You can find more information about LP vaults here and see the github repo here.

Slinky Sidecar & Raydium Integrations

In this release, dYdX Chain will integrate with Skip Protocol’s Slinky Sidecar and Raydium. The integration with Raydium will unlock oracle prices on all Raydium assets (Solana). The Slinky integration will improve stability and speed of oracle price updates by removing oracle price updates from the consensus process and by bringing block-by-block oracle updates with lower latency prices than before.

These two integrations are part of an ongoing process to enable deployer communities to bring more markets efficiently to dYdX Chain and make dYdX the #1 place for DeFi trading.

See the Github for the Slinky and Raydium releases.

Other Updates

Some other updates in v5.0 include:

Batch Order cancellations which allows for users to cancel up to 100 short term orders at a time.
General performance improvements, including parallelizing signature verification.
Soft open interest cap which scales up the Initial Margin Fraction (IMF) after Open Interest (OI) exceeds a configurable cap
Full node streaming which allows the full node to stream data directly to subscribers via GRPC

We’re incredibly excited about all these new features as they unlock a universe of tokens and usability not seen before on any other platform.

About dYdX and Terms

Here at dYdX, our mission is to democratize access to financial opportunity. We believe that v4 software will represent notable progress in service of that mission. The events in the global economy that have transpired over the last year have only reinforced the need for open, transparent, and permissionless financial products. We’re excited for v4 software to better meet those needs.

If building the future of a decentralized exchange and open finance is something you’re interested in, check out what it’s like to work at dYdX and our open roles!

To ask additional questions, join the discussion on Discord, participate in the dYdX community, or follow us on Twitter. We’re excited to continue building the dYdX Chain and will continue to release updates over the coming months.

Terms and Conditions: This post is subject to the dYdX Terms of Use. The dYdX interface and products are not available to persons or entities who reside in, are located in, are incorporated in, or have registered offices in the United States or Canada ("Blocked Persons"), or other Restricted Persons (as defined in the dYdX Terms of Use). dYdX products and services are not intended for, and should not be used by, Blocked Persons or Restricted Persons. Terms of Use specific to v4 software can be found here.