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Wallet Holder Insights: Anticipating the dYdX v4 Launch
Jake Kennis
main
Key Takeaways
14 min read
  • The 585 wallets identified as ‘DYDX Bulls’ more than doubled their holdings in the last 3 months, moving from 16.76m DYDX tokens to over 39.4m tokens. The USD inflows of DYDX across these wallets range from $10k to $10m, and include some well-known funds such as Cumberland, CMS, and Sigil Fund.
  • The distribution of the 'DYDX Bulls' has been split between new and old wallets, with over 42% of addresses created in 2023 and the remaining 58% being active for over a year or more.
  • Among the top accumulators, 25 wallets had greater than $1m inflows in the past three months, some of which are linked to well-known names such as Wintermute Trading and Cumberland. Some of the wallets were also funded directly from the dYdX Foundation and investor distribution wallets, which shows potential investor activity.

Introduction

dYdX is the most popular decentralized perpetual exchange today. We have written about them extensively here and Cumberland has put out a note covering v4 and its first mover advantage. In short, they have their v4 launch coming in the fall of 2023 which is a huge catalyst across many things - such as scalability, decentralization, and MEV. For the scope of this report, we will solely focus on the role of the DYDX token from an on-chain perspective.

Our Approach

V4 is expected to launch at the end of September in 2023, just shy of 2 months at the time of writing. We wanted to highlight wallets who have been accumulating DYDX tokens leading up to the highly anticipated launch and did it with size. Given this, we narrowed down the wallets using the following criteria:

  • Inflows of DYDX token between May 8th - August 11th, 2023
  • Inflows > $10k
  • Only EOAS, we filtered out
    • Exchanges
    • MEV wallets
    • Bots

The date range of May 8 - August 11th was chosen because it was the last 3 months from the time of writing and it corresponds to price action trading well below $2.25. We only look at accumulation during this time period, so there is a chance current wallet balances may be empty given they either transferred tokens out of their wallet or sold.

Key takeaway is that we narrowed down a list of wallets that have accumulated over $10k DYDX in the last 3 months in anticipation of of v4.

Now, let's see who these DYDX bulls are.

The Top Accumulators

Below, we show the 585 wallets that satisfied the above criteria and show their distribution by USD amount:

Source: Nansen Query

Buyers in the $10k - 50k range were the most popular, making up over 67% of wallets. As for the other ⅓ of wallets, they aped in size, ranging from $50k to $10m. Notably, 25 wallets accumulated over $1m of DYDX leading into v4, which shows a lot of conviction going into the catalyst.

Funds and Smart Money

Source: Nansen Query

There were 10 smart money wallets who are ‘DYDX Bulls’, which includes some well-known funds such as Cumberland, CMS, Sigil Fund, and Spartan Group. Additionally, there is Wintermute and Jump Trading, but they are also active market makers.

Age of Wallets

The age of wallets skews heavily across the wallets, from OGs to fresh wallets. Below shows the count of addresses based on their year of first activity.

Source: Nansen Query

Over 42% of addresses were created in 2023, suggesting a lot of fresh wallet activity. But the other 58% of wallets have been active for over a year or more. This suggests that fresh wallets and OGs are equally interested in the DYDX trade.

Wallet Holdings

We have shown some high-level stats on these wallets, such as USD inflows, Smart Money, and wallet age, but what about their DYDX holdings over time?

Source: Nansen Query

As of May 9th, these wallets held 16.76m DYDX tokens at around $2.13. As of today, August 15, these wallets hold over 39.4m tokens which is around $85.2m of holdings using the current prices. In other words, the balances of the ‘DYDX Bulls’ more than doubled in the last 3 months leading up to v4.

Let's turn our focus to the ‘Whales’, which we can define as wallets with greater than $1m inflows in the last 3 months.

Whale Wallet Activity

There were 25 wallets with greater than $1m inflows in the past 3 months. 17 wallets (68% of wallets) were made in 2023, 13 of which were made in May 2023 onwards. At first glance, this suggests that a lot of these wallets are fresh to make these trades; let's explore further as it's a bit more nuanced. We omit Wintermute’s address due to its high activity, so the following stats are based on the 24 other wallets.

Chain Allocation

Simply put, nearly all of the DYDX bulls have a majority of their holdings on Ethereum mainnet. As of August 15th, the top chains they are allocated to are:

  • Ethereum - $123.65m
  • Arbitrum - $6.35m
  • BNB Chain - $2.83m
  • Optimism - $1.42m
  • Polygon - $1.38m
  • Avalanche - $234k

Token Allocation

As for top tokens held across these wallets, we have the following tokens listed from largest to smallest that are greater than $1m as of August 15th. Note this is an aggregate sum of all wallets and not the frequency of token holding per wallet.

  1. DYDX - $49.86m
  2. ETH - $24.39m
  3. BLUR - $6.99m
  4. ARB - $5.16m
  5. MATIC - $3.42m
  6. USDC - $3.29m
  7. LDO - $3m
  8. PEPE - $2.2m
  9. UNI - $1.56m
  10. WETH - $1.68m
  11. RNDR - $1m

Wallet Deep Dives

Next, we analyze each individual wallet, which will cover their dYdX activity, and then give an overview of their main token holdings as of August 15th.

Some key highlights of the wallet before diving into them are the following:

  • Lots of ‘fresh wallet’ activity actually trace back to the investor distribution wallet in previous years. The DYDX transferred was usually sitting idle and was mostly transferred in the last 3 months. Most of the wallets that fall under this category hold DYDX as their main holding.
  • CMS and Cumberland hold multi-million dollar positions, with Cumberland interacting with many of the top wallets by inflows over this window. This does not suggest that these other wallets are Cumberland, but it is worth noting the source of DYDX funds.

We provide links for each wallet - the address is hyperlinked to see a portfolio view and the links below the address show the wallet profiler for token dashboard. To make the best use of this, the dashboards can help you understand the following:

  • Linked address: current portfolio view of token holdings/chain allocation
  • Wallet profiler for token: track DYDX activity and trail of funding
  1. 0xdbf5e9c5206d0db70a90108bf936da60221dc080

This wallet belongs to Wintermute Trading and it has accumulated the most DYDX over this period, around $8.78m DYDX but its current balance is $2.3m at the time of writing. You can track their DYDX activity here, which is a bit noisy given it's a high-activity wallet that is an active market maker.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • ARB - $47m (33% of wallet holdings)
  • OP - $32.5m (22.8% of wallet holdings)
  • MTC - $10.2m (7% of wallet holdings)
  • ETH - $8.48m (6% of wallet holdings)
  • HFT - $5m (3.5% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0x7000042970cbbd3c1647f9e095561446d4afc79b

This wallet’s DYDX holdings have seen inflows from both Cumberland and a Falcon X wallet but is now empty. They transferred funds to this Token millionaire, which has a $4.19m spot position of DYDX as of August 15. This wallet is 2 hops away from a known Cumberland wallet. Of course, this may be another party or some type of OTC deal, but it is worth noting it is linked to another Cumberland wallet. As for other tokens such as PEPE, they were funded by Wintermute so this shows many counterparties.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • ARB - $5.1m (% of wallet holdings)
  • PEPE - $1.7m (% of wallet holdings)
  • RDNT - $603k (% of wallet holdings)
  • ARB - $5.1m (% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0x63c6139e8275391ada0e2a59d1599066243747c2

This wallet first received its DYDX on June 23rd, 2023 from another wallet. However, tracking the flows of the DYDX  to the first funder - we actually go back to September 2021 to a wallet that was funded by the dYdX Foundation wallet itself and has received funds from the investor distribution wallet. There are 5 hops between wallets but you can track it using the wallet profiler for token and continue going back. This is the current wallet, and this is the 5 hops removed wallet, which suggests this is linked to a dYdX investor. Today, it mainly holds DYDX and a bit of MYTH.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • DYDX - $5.74m (87% of wallet holdings)
  • MYTH - $812k (13% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0xcf217477798a05e409d8193348334e998c82909e

This wallet sits on nearly $5m of DYDX tokens that were funded from this wallet, which was funded directly from 🏦 Coinbase Custody: dYdX Investor Distribution - this wallet has historically funded dYdX investors. We can likely assume that this wallet is an investor or one party removed from being one.

This wallet only holds DYDX, a ~$5m position.

  1. 0x38346234cd0e108962b78dde643cddba1ce0ff6b

Interestingly, the 2nd wallet (0x700…) in the deep dive also funded this wallet as shown here and that wallet was funded by a known Cumberland wallet. This suggests that they may also be related or it is a OTC deal.

They only hold DYDX, with around $4.1m at today's prices.

0xad6eaa735d9df3d7696fd03984379dae02ed8862

This is a known Cumberland wallet that has a few interactions with 2 of the wallets above. In this confirmed address, they hold $1.66m of DYDX. They have been sending a lot of DYDX to a few token millionaire wallets which can be linked from this dashboard.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • ETH - $9m (68% of wallet holdings)
  • MATIC - $1.9m (14.2% of wallet holdings)
  • DYDX - $1.6m (12.2% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0xaa3d56e9695f75eecd6e3e78546154b727147b8a

This wallet sits on $3.3m of DYDX tokens. It received its funds from a token millionaire wallet and Cumberland. It looks like the token millionaire wallet can also be linked to Cumberland through inflows, which you can track here.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • DYDX - $3.3m (55% of wallet holdings)
  • UNI - $1.47m (24% of wallet holdings)
  • LDO - $1.3m (21% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0xebc7d306b2a085125b7868a18ff5e387721b1b9e

This wallet currently holds $3.3m of DYDX tokens. It received funds from another wallet that was funded directly from the dYdX investor distributor wallet as shown here. DYDX is the only token this wallet holds.

  1. 0x06cda431b3ef69b077e3c441f1c8837e0833e97b

This wallet first received DYDX in April 2023, from a wallet that was originally funded DYDX from a known Amber wallet. This wallet also was funded from wallets that have interacted with Dragonfly and Cumberland, noted by inflows from these two funds.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • DYDX - $9.51m (59% of wallet holdings)
  • BLUR - $6.48m (40% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0x2a2567d3e65ba15f0e70664119f242789128f2fc

This Token Millionaire holds over $2.7m of DYDX, representing nearly all of its holdings. Tracking it on-chain, it was mainly funded from two wallets mathrix.eth and a high balance wallet. The funding wallet mathrix.eth has been an active participant in DYDX since 2022, having staked DYDX into the safety module, and has received plenty of DYDX rewards.

  1. 0x5f1e3fa7d2fd38e5ed446ac55c81f6dc0e2e2df6

This token millionaire is holding $2.4m of DYDX, having first received its holdings at the end of May 2023 from CEXs.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • DYDX - $2.4m (57% of wallet holdings)
  • RNDR - $976k (23% of wallet holdings)
  • RBN - $869k (20% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0x9cfaf0029463c844d0c63167a4d05f4b9cb84f5d

This token millionaire is holding $2.48m of DYDX, having first received it at the end of June 2023. It was funded by this wallet which received its tokens from 🏦 Coinbase Custody: dYdX Investor Distribution. This can indicate this wallet is related to one of the investors. DYDX is the only holding in this wallet.

  1. 0xa1b9ae88e04429e1c2a41eae264aec5d88914810

This wallet looks to have sold off its DYDX holdings, as it deposited its entire DYDX position to CEXs.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • ETH - $1.93m (47% of wallet holdings)
  • BICO - $890k (21.7% of wallet holdings)
  • ASTO - $495k (12% of wallet holdings)
  • GRT - $214k (5.2% of wallet holdings)
  • DG - $204k (5% of wallet holdings)
  • GNS - $195k (4.7% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0xf4bbd93fc511a8804cf858c0c322d5da5e3d6fe8

This token millionaire holds over $2m DYDX. It first received it in May 2023 from this wallet which was a recipient of the ‘🏦 Coinbase Custody: dYdX Investor Distribution’ wallet, suggesting that it may be an investor.

  1. 0x11ce08cff0a906095da81adc13d92606d7f190f7

This ETH millionaire holds $2.1m DYDX. It was funded from a high-balance wallet that started accumulating DYDX in November 2022.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • ETH - $8.38m (80% of wallet holdings)
  • DYDX - $2.1m (20% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0x2a9df649f88b9ea0d85a405299ceab227da4c5dd

This wallet holds over $553k of DYDX. It consistently interacts with Wintermute since December 2022.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • USDC - $2.9m (82% of wallet holdings)
  • DYDX - $553k (16% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0xc02ad7b9a9121fc849196e844dc869d2250df3a6

This wallet belongs to the fund CMS and it holds over $1.6m DYDX. This was funded by another CMS wallet that holds an additional $3.78m DYDX. Between the two wallets, there is over $5.38m DYDX.

Main token holdings in their portfolio (the first wallet):

  • DYDX - $1.6m (60% of wallet holdings)
  • MKR - $985k (37% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0x6d67c3e0ac92442dca322596dcbd6478cd03fe14

This token millionaire holds over $1.3m DYDX. It has never sent an outgoing transaction, but you can track the one inflow here.

  1. 0x9cb40716d392d8ab5fab4f29ec60fe53090c65ad

This wallet holds over $1.16m of DYDX. It first started receiving DYDX from CEXs in May 2023.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • DYDX - $1.16m (21% of wallet holdings)
  • LDO - $871k (15% of wallet holdings)
  • MNT - $860k (15% of wallet holdings)
  • MATIC - $1.15m (20% of wallet holdings)
  • SSV - $485k (8.5% of wallet holdings)
  • STG - $442k (7.8% of wallet holdings)
  • sUSD - $464k (8.1% of wallet holdings)
  1. 0x2008b6c3d07b061a84f790c035c2f6dc11a0be70

This token millionaire holds $284k DYDX. It first received DYDX from April 2023 onward and has been very active since.

Main token holdings in their portfolio:

  • WETH - $1.39m (15% of wallet holdings)
  • WBNB - $732k (8% of wallet holdings)
  • ETH - $860k (9.4% of wallet holdings)
  • LDO - $679k (7.4% of wallet holdings)
  • WBTC - $651k (7.1% of wallet holdings)
  • PEPE - $584k (6.4% of wallet holdings)
  • USDT - $482k (5.2% of wallet holdings)
  • LINK - $359k (4% of wallet holdings)
  • AGIX - $278k (3% of wallet holdings)
  • MKR - $259k (2.8% of wallet holdings)
  • CRV - $224k (2.4% of wallet holdings)

Noisy Wallets Removed

We omitted a few wallets from the above as some of them were empty, but we will leave them below in case you want to investigate them further.

Conclusion

On-chain movements suggest a lot of activity leading up to v4. There has been a consistent accumulation of DYDX tokens with size (greater than $10k), as shown by the 585 EOA wallets that fell into this category. Smart Money and funds are also along for the ride, having dYdX investors and others join in the accumulation. Diving deeper into the top 25 wallets, it actually appears that there are many more unlabelled investors who are mobilizing idle funds into fresh wallets.

Overall, the DYDX accumulators mainly hang out on the Ethereum mainnet and a few L2s, BNB chain, and Polygon. As for token holdings, DYDX is by far the largest holding across the wallets, followed by ETH and then a series of altcoins and stables.

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Disclosure: The authors of this content and members of Nansen may be participating or invested in some of the protocols or tokens mentioned herein. The foregoing statement acts as a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and is not a recommendation to purchase or invest in any token or participate in any protocol. Nansen does not recommend any particular course of action in relation to any token or protocol. The content herein is meant purely for educational and informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as financial, investment, legal, tax or any other professional or other advice. None of the content and information herein is presented to induce or to attempt to induce any reader or other person to buy, sell or hold any token or participate in any protocol or enter into, or offer to enter into, any agreement for or with a view to buying or selling any token or participating in any protocol. Statements made herein (including statements of opinion, if any) are wholly generic and not tailored to take into account the personal needs and unique circumstances of any reader or any other person. Readers are strongly urged to exercise caution and have regard to their own personal needs and circumstances before making any decision to buy or sell any token or participate in any protocol. Observations and views expressed herein may be changed by Nansen at any time without notice. Nansen accepts no liability whatsoever for any losses or liabilities arising from the use of or reliance on any of this content.