Market makers offer trades through order book & make money on bid-ask spreads (supply-side fees).

dYdX is a non-custodial trading and derivatives protocol initially built on Ethereum and later expanded to their own blcokchain built on top of the Cosmos SDK. dYdX was founded by Antonio Juliano and launched in 2017.

DYDX tokenholders own and govern the protocol. dYdX Trading Inc. currently takes all of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue). dYdX’s investors include a16z, Polychain, The Spartan Group, etc.

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dYdX

# dYdX Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average Fees per User (AFPU) measures the average daily fee revenue generated per active user on the dYdX protocol. This metric is calculated by dividing total daily fees by the number of daily active users, providing insight into user engagement and revenue efficiency across dYdX's various product versions and chains.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation draws from multiple blockchain and API data sources:

- **dYdX chain events**: Parsed `message` events containing transaction sender information and `match` events from dYdX V4 trading containing maker/taker details and fee amounts
- **dYdX chain transactions**: Native blockchain transaction records including transaction fees and tips paid in DYDX tokens
- **dYdX API data**: Historical trading fee data scraped from dYdX's API covering dYdX V3 operations
- **Manual fee records**: Team-provided historical fee data for early 2023 to fill data gaps and correct API inconsistencies
- **Legacy revenue data**: Historical Ethereum-based revenue records from earlier dYdX versions
- **External price feeds**: End-of-day CoinGecko price data for DYDX token to enable USD conversion of native chain fees

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Daily active users identification
- **Purpose**: Identify and count unique users across all dYdX products and activities on a daily basis
- **Logic**: Extract user addresses from three distinct sources: transaction senders from dYdX chain `message` events, takers from dYdX V4 trading `match` events, and makers from dYdX V4 trading `match` events. Each user address is extracted using JSON parsing of event attributes (sender field for messages, `maker_subaccount` and `taker_subaccount` for matches). Timestamps are truncated to day level and users are deduplicated using HyperLogLog aggregation to efficiently handle distinct counting across different user types and activity categories.
- **Key fields**: `user_address` for unique identification, `block_timestamp` for daily aggregation, `user_type` to categorize activity (transaction sender, taker, maker), `product_id` to distinguish between product versions

### Component B: Fee aggregation across product versions
- **Purpose**: Compile comprehensive daily fee totals from all dYdX product versions and fee sources
- **Logic**: Combine five distinct fee sources with different time coverage and formats. Manual historical fees provide curated early 2023 data with hardcoded daily amounts. API trading fees aggregate hourly data by taking 24-hour rolling snapshots at specific UTC hours (00:00, 01:00, or 02:00) with manual overrides for data quality issues. Legacy revenue data covers historical Ethereum-based operations. Native chain fees sum transaction fees and tips from dYdX chain transactions, requiring currency conversion from DYDX tokens to USD using end-of-day CoinGecko prices and 18-decimal adjustment. dYdX V4 trading fees extract maker and taker fee amounts from match event JSON attributes, with USDC amounts converted by dividing by 10^6.
- **Key fields**: `fee_amount` or `fees` for revenue values, `timestamp` for daily aggregation, `chain_id` and `product_id` for source identification, `coingecko_id` for price conversion reference

### Component C: Currency conversion and normalization
- **Purpose**: Convert all fee amounts to USD for consistent aggregation
- **Logic**: Apply different conversion methods based on fee source. USDC-denominated dYdX V4 fees require simple decimal adjustment (division by 10^6). Native DYDX token fees from chain transactions are converted using end-of-day CoinGecko prices with 18-decimal normalization (division by 10^18). Manual and API fees are already in USD format. All conversions use the `convert_to_usd_cg` macro for consistent price application and decimal handling.
- **Key fields**: `fees` for converted USD amounts, `decimals` for token precision, `coingecko_id` for price lookup

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Daily active user counts and total daily fees are joined by timestamp using the `calculate_arpu` macro, which performs the division operation to compute average fees per user
- **Currency conversion**: All fees are standardized to USD through token-specific conversion methods and end-of-day price application
- **Time aggregation**: Both users and fees are aggregated to daily level using timestamp truncation, ensuring consistent temporal alignment
- **Final calculation**: AFPU equals total daily fees in USD divided by the count of distinct daily active users, with zero-filling applied to maintain continuous time series coverage for missing days

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

dYdXDYDX

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

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