The founder of the decentralized exchange dYdX is stepping down as CEO after seven years of heading the crypto derivatives platform.

In a May 13 blog post, Antonio Juliano announced his decision to move from the exchange's daily operations to the position of chairman and president. "I’m stepping down as CEO of dYdX Trading In., transitioning to Chairman & President," wrote Juliano.

The company is now led by Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen, dYdX’s former chief strategy officer. According to his LinkedIn profile, Crnkovic-Rubsamen is a former trader who has worked at the decentralized exchange since 2022.

“As I realized I did not need to be CEO, I worked to shepherd other leaders at the company on their own leadership journeys, until one of them was ready to run the company himself,” said Juliano in reference to Crnkovic-Rubsamen.

Juliano did not mention his future professional goals but suggested a “next step” for his career: “I have no plans for what comes next for me, and no idea what I’ll do.” Prior to founding dYdX, Juliano was a software engineer at companies such as Coinbase, Uber and MongoDB.

According to data from DefiLlama, dYdX has seen a surge in activity in recent months as the crypto markets rebounded. The DEX has a market capitalization of more than $1.1 billion at the time of writing, and $463 million in total value locked. The DEX's annualized revenue is at $35.4 million. In total, derivatives activity generated over $1.31 trillion of trading volume since 2021.

Much of the recent trading activity could be linked to ongoing developments surrounding the protocol, such as the launch of dYdX's own layer-1 blockchain in October 2023. Based on the native DYDX token for network transactions, the network enables returning gas fees back to validators and stakers as rewards.

In addition, dYdX rolled out its v4 upgrade in January, moving the DEX from Ethereum to the Cosmos network.

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