Published on January 23, 2026
Watch the video of this keynote on Gamma Prime’s YouTube channel:
Keynote speech by Sarthak Jain (Head of Institutional Sales at dydx)
Again, it’s a good time to kind of reflect on 2025, what we have achieved, and perhaps also give you a flavor of 2026 and what we are working on. This year, we launched our first dYdX ETP, which is, again, brilliant. In previous panels and at all of these conferences, you hear, “Institutions are coming, institutions are here.”
Well, that’s why we launched the ETP, because it was demanded by institutions and demanded by community members.
An ETP is a regulated product. It allows institutions to get exposure to the dYdX token in a regulated manner. Additionally, we added new distribution models. Now, we feel like in the world of crypto these days, users do not necessarily need to go to the dApp, but perhaps the dApp can also go to the us
What do I mean by that? This year, we launched partnerships with Crypto.com, with Thor Wallet, and many more to come in the pipeline, which essentially means that if you’re an on-chain wallet user, you can natively access dYdX perps without even logging on to dYdX.trade. This allows seamless trading, seamless execution, and creates much broader access for us to offer perps to crypto user
We also launched dYdX Surge, which is a $20 million trading competition. Again, as I mentioned to you guys, we are a product from 2017. We launched our token in 2021. So we are not the shiny new thing in the market right now, but that doesn’t mean that traders and community members can’t benefit by participating on dYdX. That’s why this $20 million competition was super successful and lucrative, allowing people to earn dYdX tokens simply by trading on the platform.
We also partnered with EMS providers and API solution providers. Again, going back to the point that institutions are coming—sophisticated traders, quant traders—they all want to trade, and they are all finding new venues to find alpha. By partnering with EMS providers and API solution providers, it allows them to go to market quickly and efficiently, and it enables them to place their first trade as soon as possible.
We also have front-end mobile trading, which means that if you’re on the go, if you’re traveling like me all the time, you can place your trades using the app on iOS or Android.
We also launched our protocol buyback program, which means that 75% of dYdX revenue is used to buy back the token. This is quite important because, as I mentioned, we are a product from 2017 with a token launch in 2021, which means most of the supply is fully unlocked. From an economic perspective, supply is limited, and we are increasing demand by ensuring consistent buybacks for the community. This is something the community wants, it benefits token holders, and it reinforces that we are a product and a protocol that puts users first.
This is an ecosystem map, which gives you a sense of who we work with and some of the partners we have. It also gives builders in this room an idea of how they can potentially get involved with us. As mentioned, you can see the Crypto.com partnership here, some of the market makers we work with, independent validators, press and media, and the infrastructure and analytics providers we collaborate with.
So, what does the market want right now? Of course, we’ve talked about 2025, what we’ve achieved, and the history of dYdX. We’re extremely proud because dYdX took bold steps and built one of the most decentralized perpetual exchanges out there. But it’s equally important to listen to what the market wants today.
The market wants speed of execution, low friction, and interoperability. In this day and age, in 2025, we should be able to offer dYdX and perps to users without any effort, without them lifting a finger—and that’s exactly what we’re working toward. In essence, we are evolving with the market.
