dydx.yml

slug: dydx
target_product: dYdX
target_url: https://dydx.exchange
description: Cosmos-based decentralized perpetuals exchange with an on-chain orderbook
benchmark: perp-fees

intro: |
  dYdX v4 is a Cosmos-based decentralized perpetuals exchange that runs an on-chain orderbook on its own appchain, with a published tier-0 taker fee of 5 basis points and one of the tightest non-zero-fee books outside Hyperliquid. Published fee schedules are only half the story for a trader picking a venue, because the rack rate ignores the spread crossed at market and the price impact eaten at notional. This benchmark measures the live all-in cost of opening a $1000 ETH long 10x position across major perpetual venues, every five minutes, by reading taker fees from each venue's own API (no hardcoded schedules) and walking each orderbook for $1000 of buy-side notional to compute the spread plus impact component. No transactions are sent. dYdX is queried via its indexer at `/orderbooks/perpetualMarket/ETH-USD` and `/perpetualMarkets`, plus the Cosmos REST endpoint `/dydxprotocol/v4/feetiers/perpetual_fee_params` for the tier-0 default fee. The same harness reads Hyperliquid via `userFees` and `l2Book`, GMX v2 through the synthetics-arbitrum subgraph for `positionFeeFactor`, Lighter via `/orderBookDetails` and `/orderBookOrders`, and gains.trade on Base by reading the fee directly on-chain. All-in cost equals taker fee plus spread, both surfaced as separate metrics. Funding rate is recorded separately (`perp_fees_funding_rate_per_hour_bps`) because it accrues per hour held rather than at open, so bundling it into a single one-number leaderboard would conflate two different fee mechanics. The dimension tab at the top of the page swaps the underlying asset between ETH, BTC and SOL.

seo_title: "dYdX alternatives: live benchmark"
seo_description: Compare dYdX v4 against Hyperliquid, Lighter, GMX v2 and gains.trade on live taker fee plus spread crossed at $1000 notional, refreshed every five minutes.

status: live

positioning: |
  dYdX v4 runs on an application-specific Cosmos SDK chain purpose-built for perpetuals, migrated off the Ethereum-based smart contracts in October 2023 with trading going live in November 2023. The moat sits at the pipeline level: validators maintain an off-chain in-memory orderbook for low-latency matching, then settle fills on-chain via consensus. Order placement and cancellation cost zero gas; fees apply only on execution and accrue to validators and stakers rather than a central operator. This split of matching from settlement is architecturally distinct from Ethereum L1 perp DEXs (fully on-chain, gas per action) and from single-sequencer L2 venues (matching lives on a proprietary node). For the perp-fees axis, the design has two direct consequences. Fees are set by governance parameter rather than by an operator, so tier changes are proposal-gated and observable on-chain. Rebates flow to on-chain makers under the same maker-taker schedule that a CEX would run, but with funds routed to the protocol staking layer instead of a company. The typical use case is high-volume market makers who want a maker rebate on a decentralized venue without paying per-order gas; teams migrate away when they need cross-margined equity products the Cosmos chain does not list.