dYdX, the decentralised exchange, announced the acquisition of the social trading application, Pocket Protector.
This comes at a time when dYdX is losing market share in the landscape of onchain leverage trading, largely due to the success of competitors such as Hyperliquid.
Now dYdX is looking to make a strategic shift into social trading as they face increasing competition.
Pocket Protector
Pocket Protector is a social trading application on Telegram that allows users to trade together in group chats. Founded in 2024, it has amassed over 50,000 users and over $1 billion in annualised revenue.
As part of this acquisition, the Pocket Protector development team will merge with dYdX, with co-founder Eddie Zhang joining as president. dYdX said the team brings extensive experience ranging from social media and mobile app development to trading and blockchain technology.
Combined, the team has raised over $25 million from major venture capital firms across their various projects.
“What really stood out was the caliber of the team – their product sense, execution speed, and engineering quality are top-tier. They are a strong cultural and technical fit,” said Juliano.
dYdX declined to share how much it paid for Pocket Protector. In 2024, the firm raised $7 million at an undisclosed valuation from investors including Electric Capital and Dragonfly Capital.
It’s not clear how dYdX will utilise Pocket Protector to boost its business. The firm said it is “excited about upcoming product experiences their technology will enable directly in the core dYdX product.”
dYdX performance
Founded in 2017, dYdX was the first decentralised exchange to offer leverage trading onchain. Since introducing perpetual futures in 2020, the platform has processed about $1.5 trillion in volume, according to DeFiLlama.
Being the first onchain leverage platform, dYdX accounted for almost the entirety of onchain leverage volumes. But as competitors such as GMX and Hyperliquid launched, dYdX’s market share rapidly diminished.
Perpetual futures volumes for dYdX hit a record high of $107 billion in October 2021, but has since fallen about 95% to $4.7 billion in June.
dYdX is currently the eighth largest onchain leverage platform by monthly volume. Hyperliquid takes the top spot by a large margin, processing $215 billion in volume in June, over 45 times larger than dYdX and about 12 times more than the next largest platform, Jupiter.
The dYdX token followed a similar pattern, falling over 85% from its record high in 2024.
To attempt to break this trend, dYdX will follow a roadmap that includes “major new product, protocol, and growth initiatives,” it said.
