Strong community opposition to the demand for a facial recognition scan to earn the deposit incentive led to the swift revocation.
Decentralized cryptocurrency derivatives exchange dYdX announced that it had withdrawn its contentious and brief $25 first deposit bonus campaign after receiving a barrage of criticism over its facial recognition requirements for new members. However, the exchange’s brief promotional campaign, which stopped on Thursday “effective immediately,” was attributed to “overwhelming demand.”
On Wednesday, the promotion went live and promised new members a $25 incentive if they made a $500 or higher platform deposit.
The only caveat was they had to consent to a “liveness check” using a webcam to confirm their identity, which some group members didn’t like.
After reportedly enrolling thousands of new customers, about 24 hours later, dYdX stated that it would discontinue the program “due to highly overwhelming demand.”
dydX Ending Their Continuous Promo:
The DEX team did not specify the duration of the promotional campaign when it was first announced, but it later admitted that it “really overestimated the amount of interest the campaign gained.”
Notably, dYdX did not address the backlash from the community in its most recent tweet, but it reiterated its use of facial recognition technology in a previous article, explaining that it was solely done to prevent users from opening multiple accounts to receive the bonus.
Others have expressed reservations about the platform using such technologies in the first place, and some in the community don’t buy it, saying that the cancellation was mostly the result of the debate.
Despite previously being a strong supporter of dYdX, a contributor to Yearn. Finance Adam Cochran tweeted to his 153,100 followers that he will be leaving the platform and selling his DYDX tokens until he sees “real changes there:”
