The decentralised crypto derivatives exchange dYdX says that it has ended its short-lived and controversial $25 first deposit bonus promotion. This comes after a lot of people complained about the fact that new users had to use facial recognition.
The exchange, on the other hand, just said that “overwhelming demand” was the reason for its short-lived advertising campaign, which ended “effective immediately” on Thursday.
The deal in question started on Wednesday, and new users who put $500 or more into the platform got a $25 bonus.
Related: UK cost-of-living problem warns ‘buy now, pay later’ lenders
The only catch was that they had to agree to do a “liveness check” via webcam to prove who they were, which didn’t go over well with some people in the community.
About 24 hours later, dYdX tweeted that the campaign was over “due to extremely overwhelming demand” and that it had signed up thousands of new users.
When the DEX was first announced, the team behind it didn’t say how long the promotion campaign would last. However, they did say that they “truly underestimated how much interest the campaign got.”
In its most recent tweet, dYdX didn’t talk about the backlash from the community. However, in an earlier post, the company doubled down on its use of facial recognition software, saying that it was only used to make sure users weren’t making multiple accounts to get the bonus.
Some people in the community don’t believe it. Some think the cancellation was mostly because of the fight, and others are worried that the platform should never have used such tools.
Adam Cochran, a contributor to Yearn.finance, tweeted to his 153,100 followers that, even though he has been a big supporter of dYdX in the past, he is leaving the platform and selling his DYDX tokens until he sees “meaningful changes there:”
Related: The Swiss drug company giant Roche will be led by the head of Roche diagnostics.
“DYDX says that this is fine again by saying that it’s only okay if you want the reward programme. In their eyes, your privacy is a commodity and a risk they are willing to take if it helps them grow.
“I’m hoping for a decentralised Perl market, but this behaviour worries me, and I think a company culture that puts growth ahead of users is dangerous,” he said.
