The exchange, on the other hand, merely claimed "overwhelming demand" as the explanation for its brief advertising campaign, which terminated on Thursday "effective immediately."
The promo in question went live on Wednesday, offering new customers a $25 incentive if they invested $500 or more into the platform.
The only catch was that they had to agree to a "liveness check" via webcam to authenticate their identity, which irritated several members of the group.
After allegedly onboarding thousands of new customers, dYdX announced roughly 24 hours later that it will discontinue the promo owing to highly overwhelming demand.
During the initial announcement, the DEX team did not specify how long the promo campaign would last, but acknowledged that they had greatly misjudged the level of interest the campaign garnered.
dYdX, notably, made no mention of the community backlash in its most recent tweet, but doubled down on its use of facial recognition software in an earlier post, claiming that it was simply used to ensure customers weren't doubling up on accounts to claim the bonus.
Some in the community aren't buying it, with some claiming the cancellation was primarily due to the controversy, while others have voiced worries about the platform adopting such tools in the first place.
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