# crypto wallet phishing — X 热门讨论 (2026-10-01 12:36 UTC)
## @muarmemuar (muar) · 10-01 12:20 · ♥26 ↻0 💬4 Why I'm skipping Arcus, even though everyone on CT posting their ref links would have you believe it's the next gem
It's no secret that Arcus is a perp DEX built by the team behind dYdX. Most people remember dYdX for one of the biggest airdrops in crypto history. Naturally, that gives Arcus a bullish narrative and makes people want to farm points for a potential airdrop. So why am I sitting this one out? Below are my reasons, followed by a few closing thoughts. I'm not saying I have all the answers or telling anyone what to do. This thread is for information only
1. Constantly switching chains
2018-2020: dYdX was building on Ethereum. 2021-2023: StarkEx. Since 2023: Cosmos, with dYdX Chain. Since 2026: Robinhood Chain, with Arcus as a separate perp DEX from the dYdX team
Name a perp DEX that kept switching chains and ended up delivering a huge airdrop or exponential volume growth because of it. Recent examples of perp DEXs repeatedly changing chains have ended badly: SynFutures, Ethereal (Meridian), Perpetual Protocol, Synthetix Perps, Gains, Hibachi
2. They shut down the bridge, leaving some long-term holders unable to migrate or sell
As part of the move to its own chain, holders of the old ERC-20 token, ethDYDX, could swap it for native DYDX through a bridge. In December 2024, a governance vote approved ending support for that bridge by June 2025. A second vote in June changed the network parameters and shut off support. Someone could have held DYDX in a cold wallet for years, missed the announcements, and ended up holding a token with no remaining route to migrate into the active ecosystem. Holders posted collective appeals on the forum and asked for the bridge to be reopened. These were complaints from actual long-term holders, not just outsiders throwing shade.
The reported damage was around $25 million worth of tokens, affecting 45,000 holders. Institutions and exchanges, which received direct warnings, mostly migrated in time. Retail holders often weren't following the forum, where posts about the proposal had only hundreds of views, and missed the deadline. According to one of the people pushing to reopen the bridge, large holders openly said on the forum that removing retail’s tokens from circulation and getting rid of that extra supply benefited them. Effectively, burning other people's tokens to reduce supply, dressed up as a "decentralized decision."
3. Problems with the exchange’s infrastructure
Trading went down during the AWS outage in December 2021. In 2022, malicious packages were published through an employee's compromised npm account. In July 2024, the v3 website's DNS was hijacked, redirecting users to a phishing site that used Permit2 signatures to drain wallets. In January 2026, the official v4 client libraries on npm and PyPI were compromised, with attackers inserting wallet-stealing malware and a remote access trojan
In November 2023, one trader ran essentially the same play on dYdX twice within two weeks: build leveraged longs, then pump the token on spot. On SUSHI, he walked away with around $5 million. On YFI, open interest ballooned from $0.8 million to $67 million. When the price crashed, the exchange covered a $9 million hole, roughly 40% of its insurance fund. The team itself controlled this "decentralized" DEX's insurance fund, while margin requirements across roughly a dozen markets were manually raised after the fact, without a governance vote
dYdX was down for eight hours during the October 10, 2025 liquidation cascade, which wiped out $19 billion across crypto, the largest in its history. Worse, after the restart, the engine executed trades and liquidations at incorrect prices because of stale oracle data. Compensation was eventually paid: around $462,000 from the insurance fund. Getting that compensation through governance took weeks. This team has been building a perp DEX since 2018, yet it's still making mistakes you'd expect from some scam devs who vibe-coded a perp DEX website in a few days, like Dango or Hotstuff
4. Questionable moves from dYdX's founder
In late March 2024, the dYdX Foundation put a restructuring proposal to a vote: move the dYdX Operations Trust into a foundation in the Cayman Islands. The official reason was to protect contributors from the SEC, which was putting heavy pressure on DeFi at the time. dYdX didn't operate in the US, but US regulators had already pursued projects outside the country. A month and a half later, Antonio Juliano announced that he was stepping down as CEO for "personal and professional reasons." The timing, so close to the Cayman restructuring, immediately sparked speculation that he was running from regulators, though there was no direct evidence
In July, Bloomberg reported that dYdX was in talks to sell v3, the old Ethereum L2 version that had made it a market leader, to a consortium of major market makers, including Wintermute and Selini Capital. No completed deal was announced, and in October, v3 was simply shut down. Five months after leaving, Juliano returned as CEO. A couple of weeks later, he laid off 35% of the core team, explaining that "the company we've built is different from the company dYdX must be."
So, in 2024 alone, they moved the operating structure to the Cayman Islands, changed CEOs and brought the old one back, tried to sell the old exchange to market makers and shut it down three months later, laid off a third of the team, and lost their lead in the perp market, with market share falling from around 80% to under 7%.
Juliano now sits on Arcus's board and, in his own words, is responsible for strategy and long-term vision. Do you think Arcus can compete with the top five perp DEXs with someone like that on its board? You don't even have to look that far. Robinhood Chain already has a leader: Lighter. If Arcus fails to carve out its share of the market, are we going to watch the same drama unfold again?
5. Investors could earn fees on locked tokens
When dYdX Chain launched in 2023, the team heavily promoted the idea that "all trading fees go to stakers," paid in USDC. But there was an important detail: investors and the team could stake tokens that were still locked. They couldn't sell them, but they could collect a share of the fees. This is explicitly stated in the documentation. For a retail buyer, that was a pretty rough deal. You buy the token on the open market for the yield, then share those fees with a massive amount of insider allocations. The more locked tokens being staked, the smaller your share of fees per token
The main issue was how it was communicated. Fee sharing got plenty of attention, while the participation of locked investor tokens barely got a mention. It wasn't mentioned at all in the official launch posts. On top of that, staking payouts went live just two weeks before a major insider unlock. Blockworks covered this criticism in November 2023. The condition wasn't completely hidden, but plenty of people found out too late
6. Suspected insider moves in DYDX ahead of major events
dYdX postponed the unlock for investors, employees and consultants from February 3 to December 1, 2023. Around 150 million tokens, worth roughly $282 million at the time, were due to unlock, which would have doubled the circulating supply. The market reacted positively to the delay, but questions about insider knowledge followed. Back on December 26, 2022, an account that looked like an insider had already posted that the unlock would be delayed until v4 launched. The post was later deleted
As December 2023 approached, tokenomics news and the dYdX Chain mainnet launch helped send the token up 109% in a month, right before the unlock. Some in the community suspected the classic "pump before the dump." Arcus came with a similar pattern: DYDX rallied 40% in a day on a teaser for a "big announcement," then dropped 23% to $0.145 after the actual reveal. Make of that what you will
7. Paying for promotion on social media
There is confirmed information covering 2024-2026: dYdX allocated $150,000 to promotion through Kaito, and another $300,000 to developing and managing the VIP affiliate program over 12 months, starting in November 2024. Its own website also has a Master Agreement for Promotion and Marketing Services covering influencer campaigns and paid ambassadors
As for 2021-2023, the following is unconfirmed. Again, this is my own speculation. Remember how KOLs shilled DYDX in 2021 and called for $50-100? Some of them were the same paid shills who made fortunes from promotional posts. Of course, there may never be proof, and nobody is going to volunteer that they were paid to shill DYDX. But if dYdX openly used paid promotion in 2024-2026, what would have stopped them from doing it unofficially in 2021-2023, paying big influencers to push the token?
Look at the DYDX chart: from $28 to $0.1. Nothing about it looks organic to me. It looks like large investors spending years unloading on retail while people were being sold dreams of a $50-100 token. I have nothing against paid promotion itself. But when it looks more like an attempt to unload on retail than introduce people to your product, that's a red flag for me.
8. Arcus"s own points program
There was no point in being early to Arcus. Early users weren't what they needed. Their documentation literally said weekly points issuance would increase as platform volume grew. A points system without a fixed supply is a massive red flag to me. You can dilute points as much as you want, and nobody is going to keep track of it all. The funniest part is that, after CT started calling it out, they decided to change it and introduce a fixed supply after all. Watching them change the rules on the fly already makes me less interested in using the DEX
My main takeaway
The size of the dYdX airdrop was a product of market conditions, not proof of an outstanding product. Around the 2021 bull-market peak, plenty of projects had absurdly inflated FDVs: ICP at $150B, AVAX at $100B, DYDX at $28B, AXS at $45B, SAND at $25B, FTM at $11B and ENJ at $10B. Everything the dYdX team did between 2021 and 2026 has only reinforced my view that the project is terrible and the huge airdrop was a case of perfect timing
Now the team wants to cash in on that old hype through Arcus. But people have short memories. Nobody seems bothered by dYdX's history; they just remember the big airdrop. What the team actually did, and what kind of product they spent nine years building, apparently doesn't matter. I'm not going to say everyone is only in it for the ref fees and doesn't care about anything else. I write about perp DEXs myself, including ones where I see legitimate red flags. With Arcus, the red flags simply outweigh the green flags for me. That's why I'm skipping it
None of this rules out a good Arcus airdrop or a TGE in favorable market conditions. None of this changes the fact that the Arcus team is now much stronger than the dYdX team used to be. And none of this rules out Arcus becoming a top-five perp DEX by volume. Personally, though, I'm more bearish than bullish on Arcus. My reasons are above. Whether you trade there is up to you https://x.com/muarmemuar/status/2105633956435460568