The dYdX community recently approved the removal of four trading pairs: AKT-USD, GNO-USD, MNRY-USD, and MOG-USD through a governance vote. According to governance data disclosed on May 3, 16 out of 31 active validators participated in this vote, with another 124 accounts casting ballots, resulting in an overall turnout rate of 46.86%. The final results showed that the approval votes accounted for an impressive 90.96%, with abstentions making up 9.04%, and no dissenting votes. This move marks a further tightening of long-tail asset risks at the protocol level for dYdX. Meanwhile, the Arbitrum committee has also taken urgent action, voting to unfreeze approximately $71 million worth of ETH. According to AICoin data, this action aims to curb potential losses of about $290 million triggered by the Kelp DAO vulnerability, with the incident now entering a critical phase of on-chain emergency handling.

At the underlying public chain level, the Ethereum Foundation recently reviewed the Soldøgn Interop held in Norway. Developers have reached a core consensus on the Glamsterdam upgrade, planning to set the lower limit of the Gas Limit to 200 million to significantly enhance network throughput. To ensure DeFi security under high load, the upgrade will introduce an external Builder process (ePBS) and rely on EIP-8037 to adjust state cost parameters, preventing state bloat by raising the costs of state creation. From the risk clearance in dYdX to loss interception in Arbitrum and Ethereum's scaling evolution, the on-chain ecosystem is showing a dual adjustment trend of tightening risk assets and reserving high load capacity.

Key details of dYdX's removal of four trading pairs

While the Ethereum layer is advancing scaling and security upgrades, the decentralized derivatives protocol dYdX is also clearing risk assets through governance measures. According to governance data disclosed by the dYdX Foundation, the community recently voted on the proposal to remove the trading pairs AKT-USD, GNO-USD, MNRY-USD, and MOG-USD. According to AiCoin data, this vote demonstrated a strong consensus: 16 out of 31 active validators participated, and 124 accounts jointly exercised their voting rights. Although the overall voting rate was 46.86%, the final approval percentage was as high as 90.96%, with dissenters at 0%, and the remaining 9.04% as abstentions. This outcome marks the formal approval of the proposal and its entry into execution.

From the risk management perspective of the derivatives platform, the central clearing of these four pairs reflects the protocol's trade-off between liquidity depth and market safety. The exit of the AKT, GNO, MNRY, and MOG trading pairs from the dYdX market indicates that the protocol is actively narrowing its coverage of tail assets to optimize overall risk exposure. Against the backdrop of possibly increasing on-chain volatility, removing contracts that have relatively low liquidity or higher volatility risk helps prevent systemic liquidation risks arising from extreme market conditions, ensuring the operational stability of core trading pairs. This governance shift from "broad expansion" to "deep defense" aligns with the logic of protocol resilience currently emphasized in the DeFi sector.

The contracts being cleared: AKT, GNO, etc.

The proposal explicitly states the removal of four trading pairs, namely AKT-USD, GNO-USD, MNRY-USD, and MOG-USD. From the asset positioning perspective, AKT (Akash Network) and GNO (Gnosis) represent niche targets in the decentralized cloud computing and infrastructure sectors, while MNRY (Moonray) and MOG (Mog Coin) are more inclined towards gaming and community culture-driven tail assets. In the existing product architecture of dYdX, such assets typically belong to relatively marginalized markets, with natural gaps in liquidity depth compared to core trading pairs. According to AiCoin data, this decision for "group removal" received a high level of agreement at the governance level, with voting results indicating that approval votes accounted for 90.96%, while dissenting votes registered at 0%. This lack of substantial opposition reflects strong consensus within the community regarding the clearance of less popular assets and the optimization of protocol risk exposure.

Although relevant reports did not disclose the specific trading volumes or positions for these four types of assets on dYdX, governance logic suggests that the concentrated removal actions may reflect a systemic tightening of the protocol's risk preference, significantly enhancing the prudent attitude towards low-traffic assets. Since the organization has not provided clear technical failures or compliance pressures as a reason, such changes are typically related to liquidity maintenance costs and liquidation risks in extreme market conditions. Due to the current lack of detailed explanations regarding individual assets, related interpretations should still retain terms like "possible" and "to be confirmed." Among the 31 active validators, only 16 participated in this vote, with an overall voting rate of 46.86%. This moderate level of engagement, along with an extremely high approval ratio, shows that the logic of "reducing long-tail markets to strengthen protocol resilience" has not faced challenges, and whether the protocol will further shrink non-core business lines is still worth monitoring.

46.86% voting rate and 9% abstention

According to AICoin data, the proposal regarding the removal of the trading pairs AKT-USD, GNO-USD, MNRY-USD, and MOG-USD demonstrated a high level of consensus in the governance process. Among the 31 active validators on dYdX, 16 participated in the voting, accounting for about 51.6%; additionally, another 124 independent accounts took part in the vote. The final statistics show that the overall voting rate was locked at 46.86%, a figure that not only surpassed the statutory threshold for protocol governance but also ensured the legality and validity of the decision during the on-chain execution phase.

In terms of the specific distribution of voting weights, the approval rate reached 90.96%, while dissenting votes recorded 0%, and the remaining 9.04% were abstentions, with no veto votes emerging throughout the process. This "zero dissent" situation is quite rare for governance proposals involving the removal of market pairs and related stakeholder interests, reflecting a high degree of consensus among core community stakeholders on clearing the long-tail market and reducing systemic risk for the protocol. Although the 9.04% abstention rate suggests that some participants hold a neutral observational attitude towards the exit of specific assets, the absence of substantial opposing resistance allowed the proposal to proceed smoothly, avoiding governance stalemates or prolonged cycles of revision.

This voting structure led by 16 active validators, along with the cooperation of 124 accounts, reveals the distribution characteristics of governance power at dYdX between core nodes and active stakeholders. For decisions like the removal of trading pairs that directly impact the asset map of the protocol, a 46.86% participation level is sufficient to support its authority. In the market environment at the beginning of May 2026, the efficient collaboration of validators and ordinary accounts demonstrated dYdX's governance mechanism's rapid response capability in the face of market structural adjustments, providing procedural assurance for subsequent protocol optimizations in resource allocation and concentrating liquidity on core assets.

Arbitrum to unfreeze $71 million in ETH

According to media reports, on the morning of May 3, 2026, the Arbitrum committee officially voted to unfreeze approximately $71 million worth of ETH. The direct impetus for this emergency intervention was the security vulnerability encountered by the DeFi protocol Kelp DAO. According to AiCoin data, the potential loss associated with this vulnerability could reach $290 million. The Arbitrum committee, exercising its emergency handling powers under the governance framework, aimed to contain the spread of the vulnerability and hedge systemic risk by unfreezing this $71 million asset. Although the publicly available materials have not disclosed the specific technical causes of the vulnerability, the risk exposure of hundreds of millions of dollars forced Arbitrum, as a second-layer network, to make quick decisions within the on-chain governance framework to maintain asset safety boundaries within the ecosystem.

When zooming out to the whole DeFi governance dimension, Arbitrum's unfreezing of assets in response to the Kelp DAO vulnerability, along with the earlier decision by the dYdX community to remove risk trading pairs, outlines different coping paths taken by leading protocols facing extreme risks in early May 2026. dYdX chose to proactively reduce unstable factors in its asset map through governance voting, a preventive contraction of its risk exposure; whereas Arbitrum's unfreezing activity is more of an emergency intervention, reflecting the strong loss-containment function of the L2 committee through intervention with the status of funds during significant security events. This linked response from the application layer to the infrastructure layer shows that current on-chain governance is no longer confined to regular protocol parameter adjustments but has evolved into a risk hedging tool with a high degree of real-time capabilities and fund scheduling abilities, making the intervention of governance power a key barrier to prevent risk spillover when addressing potential losses of $290 million.

Ethereum's 200 million Gas target

On the evolution path of the underlying infrastructure, Ethereum is attempting to achieve a new balance between security and performance through the Glamsterdam upgrade. Reports indicate that the Ethereum Foundation held the Soldøgn Interop event in Longyearbyen, Norway from April 28 to May 2, 2026. During this period, core developers reached a basic consensus on three core objectives regarding the Glamsterdam upgrade: establishing a consensus on the lower limit of the Gas Limit at 200 million, achieving stable operation of ePBS (external Builder process), and locking in the state creation Gas repricing parameters of EIP-8037. This series of advancements indicates that Ethereum has entered a tangible parameter implementation phase on the scaling path, with most clients already achieving stable operation in the glamsterdam-devnet-2 development network and completing end-to-end testing of ePBS.

The core logic of the Glamsterdam upgrade lies in "enhancing throughput under the premise of security." To support the computational and storage pressure brought by the 200 million Gas Limit, developers introduced the EIP-8037 protocol, which raises the Gas costs of state creation for a more precise pricing of resource consumption. This repricing mechanism aims to prevent the unlimited expansion of state data under high Gas Limit conditions, thus ensuring that ordinary nodes remain operational. Meanwhile, the stable operation of the ePBS process has optimized the participation path for external Builders, strengthening the efficiency and security of block production. This combination of technologies indicates that Ethereum's scaling is not blindly pursuing high numbers but is designed to suppress the side effects of high throughput through mechanism design.

For high-frequency contract platforms and various derivatives protocols, the raising of the underlying Gas cap will directly impact their trading capacity and protocol safety boundaries. The establishment of a 200 million Gas target provides a broader physical space for on-chain high-frequency trading, helping to alleviate network congestion during extreme circumstances. Although the final parameters still await confirmation in future meetings, this capacity expansion from the underlying protocol layer, along with the clearance of risk assets at the application layer (such as dYdX) and emergency interventions at L2 (such as Arbitrum), collectively creates the current interlinked picture of the crypto ecosystem: that is, while raising the system's carrying limit, implementing refined governance and technical means to strictly control potential systemic risks.

Observational points following the update of the DeFi risk list

Integrating the removal of long-tail trading pairs by dYdX, Arbitrum's emergency intervention in the Kelp DAO vulnerability, and the latest developments in the Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade, the current DeFi ecosystem is showcasing a governance trend of "coordinated enhancement of underlying expansion and upper-level risk control." According to AiCoin statistics, the dYdX community completed the vote to remove AKT-USD, GNO-USD, MNRY-USD, and MOG-USD markets with a strong approval rate of 90.96% and zero dissenting votes, reflecting a prudent stance in managing long-tail assets. At the same time, the Arbitrum committee's emergency action to unfreeze approximately $71 million in ETH is a typical case of on-chain governance addressing systemic risks (such as the approximately $290 million loss risk posed by Kelp DAO). This handling of risk from the application layer to the L2 layer is synergizing with the consensus on the 200 million Gas Limit achieved by Ethereum during the Soldøgn Interop, collectively building a more high-throughput and resilient execution environment.

Future market observations should focus on the effectiveness of governance decision implementation and parameter realization: first, whether dYdX will further tighten its long-tail contract list to optimize liquidity efficiency of the protocol; second, the effectiveness of loss control after Arbitrum's unfreezing of funds and the final resolution of the Kelp DAO vulnerability; lastly, the stability of Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade after the glamsterdam-devnet-2 phase, particularly the actual adjustment capability of EIP-8037 on state expansion costs. It should be reminded that the above signals are primarily concentrated on confirmed governance and technical actions, and due to the current lack of quantitative data support related to trading volumes, funding rates, or whale fund flows, investors should carefully differentiate structural adjustments at the protocol level from short-term market sentiment fluctuations, avoiding excessive interpretations of single governance actions as immediate market-leading signals.

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