dYdX raises margin necessities in some markets, bans “extremely worthwhile trades”

by Jeremy

Decentralized crypto trade dYdX has disclosed new measures to mitigate trading-related dangers after burning $9 million of its insurance coverage fund on Nov. 17 to cowl customers’ losses.

Based on an announcement on X (previously Twitter), the trade elevated margin necessities on a number of “much less liquid markets,” affecting tokens similar to Eos (EOS), 0x Protocol (ZRX), Aave (AAVE), Algorand (ALGO), Web Pc (ICP), Monero (XRM), Tezos (XTZ), Zcash (ZEC), SushiSwap (SUSHI), THORChain (RUNE), Synthetix (SNX), Enjin (ENJ), 1inch Community (1INCH), Celo (CELO), Yearn.finance (YFI), and Uma (UMA).

dYdX triggered its insurance coverage fund to cowl customers’ buying and selling losses on Nov. 17 after a worthwhile commerce focusing on lengthy positions on the YFI token induced the liquidation of positions price practically $38 million.

dYdX founder Antonio Juliano dubbed the transfer a “focused assault” on the trade. Based on him, YFI’s open curiosity in dYdX spiked from $0.8 million to $67 million in a matter of days because of the actions of 1 particular person. The identical particular person, in accordance with Juliano, tried to assault the SUSHI market on dYdX just a few weeks earlier.

“We did take motion to extend preliminary margin ratios for $YFI previous to the worth crash, however this was finally not ample. The actor was in a position to withdraw a great quantity of $USDC from dYdX proper earlier than the worth crash,” he wrote.

On X, the trade’s crew stated that “extremely worthwhile buying and selling methods have now been banned on dYdX,” in a reference to the language utilized by Mango Markets’ exploiter Avraham Eisenberg in his $116 million assault of 2022.

dYdX is now providing a bounty cost in trade for worthwhile data:

The YFI token declined by 43% in only a few hours on Nov. 17 after hovering over 170% in November. The sharp decline worn out over $300 million in market capitalization from the latest good points, in accordance to information from CoinMarketCap. Previously 30 days, nevertheless, the token has nonetheless gained over 90%, buying and selling at $9,190 on the time of writing.

The Yearn.finance crew hasn’t disclosed any official particulars in regards to the incident. A supply aware of the matter instructed Cointelegraph that builders on the crew don’t management nearly all of the token provide, strongly refuting preliminary issues a couple of potential rip-off. The declare is supported by Etherscan information displaying giant centralized exchanges as YFI high holders.

Journal: Blockchain detectives — Mt. Gox collapse noticed beginning of Chainalysis