Synthetix Quarterly Report — Q2 2024

Quarterly Report for Synthetix, Quarter 2 of 2024: April — June.

👉Q2 Highlights

⭐ Spartan Council/CCs: V3 Scaling & Arbitrum Deployment⭐ Ambassador Council: OP Grants

The previous few months have been a interval of dynamic development and strategic growth for Synthetix, underscored by the profitable launch of Synthetix V3 on Base and Arbitrum, and a sequence of thrilling new market listings and incentive packages. As we navigate these modifications, let’s take a second to evaluate among the key highlights and challenges confronted by the Synthetix Protocol in Q2.

One of many greatest milestones that the Core Contributors (CCs) have been monitoring for the reason that V3 launch on Base was the scaling of the Perps product to $100 million in every day quantity and $20 million+ in LP collateral. These milestones aimed to check two base instances — would customers be occupied with buying and selling on-chain Perps wherever the strongest product existed with the bottom charges AND would LPs be occupied with offering collateral apart from SNX (for a charge).

Though buying and selling volumes haven’t fairly hit the $100 million goal (although often topping $50 million in a single day) it has been made clear that there’s an urge for food for LP alternatives. The LP milestone was reached only a month after the cap was raised from $10 million, peaking round $25 million. A lot of the efforts now have been centered on directing merchants in direction of the product that integrators have been incentivized to spearhead through the V3 charge sharing mannequin.

One other pivotal second for the protocol this quarter was the deployment to Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling resolution. This strategic transfer aimed to reinforce transaction effectivity, cut back prices, and enhance person expertise for the Synthetix ecosystem. By leveraging Arbitrum’s rollup know-how, Synthetix will be capable of proceed providing considerably lowered fuel charges and transaction prices, enabling extra seamless and cost-effective buying and selling for customers on one more chain within the second remoted deployment of the 12 months.

This deployment reinforces Synthetix’s dedication to staying on the forefront of DeFi and showcases the protocol’s newfound agility in V3 to observe robust person bases and spin up best-in-class Perps markets the place demand is strongest.

The deployment can even function assist for yield-generating collateral, permitting LPs to gather rewards whereas sustaining publicity to a secondary yield supply. There was fairly a little bit of enthusiasm surrounding this deployment and, as with the Base deployment, charges will probably be shared with Synthetix stakers through a buyback and burn mechanism.

Synthetix was awarded a grant on the finish of June from the Arbitrum Lengthy Time period Incentive Program (LTIP) and the plan to make use of these funds to draw liquidity suppliers was authorized by Arbitrum and commenced in the course of June. This program to this point has attracted almost $25 million in LP collateral!

Along with their function in securing the LTIP grant from Arbitrum, the Ambassadors have been instrumental in securing three further OP grants for ecosystem companions in Q2. The primary was the Polynomial Optimistic Indexer grant, which goals to develop a strong indexing resolution for the Optimism blockchain, bettering information accessibility and lowering latency for customers. The second was the Superchain Buying and selling Instruments grant which seeks to reinforce the buying and selling infrastructure on the Optimism community, offering superior instruments and options to optimize buying and selling methods and execution. Lastly, the Strands Optimism Integration Acceleration grant focuses on accelerating the combination of Strands’ monetary know-how options with the Optimism ecosystem, selling innovation and broader adoption of decentralized finance functions on the platform.

Lastly for the highlights, we’d additionally like to provide a shoutout to Synthetix designer Steve for the entire graphics you see on this weblog put up!🙏

👉Challenges

After an explosive first quarter for Perps V2, which noticed over $10 billion in buying and selling quantity, exercise appears to have cooled a bit in Q2 with solely about $6 billion in quantity recorded by means of the top of June throughout Optimism and Base. Open curiosity on Base peaked at round $8 million in June — only a small fraction of the obtainable cap area. With out further incentives to maintain LPs , buying and selling exercise, and the rewards generated from it, might want to sufficiently entice LPs to maintain their collateral tied up in that deployment.

The decline in buying and selling exercise wasn’t restricted to Base, nonetheless, as decrease volatility and onchain perps buying and selling quantity gave the impression to be a broad pattern all through the area. Final quarter, we reported the protocol had crossed the $50 billion milestone in cumulative quantity largely as a result of robust efficiency of Perps V2 on Optimism. The second quarter noticed volumes drop greater than 50% on Optimism to $4.5 billion.

Regardless of these challenges, the protocol stays dedicated to innovation and development. A SIP not too long ago made it by means of governance to ship on the protocol’s promise to construct a best-in-class orderbook Perps DEX which can appeal to a bigger person base seeking to commerce on-chain Perps on the lowest value.

At first of the quarter, the Treasury council introduced a plan to allocate funding to construct out a Perps market on Solana. This triggered a governance debate that has surfaced a number of instances within the present governance framework of Synthetix. The Treasury Council took this motion unilaterally and there have been a couple of members of the Spartan Council who voiced some concern, on condition that the Spartan Council is tasked with creating and executing the strategic path of the protocol.

The Treasury Council, nonetheless, has all the time had the discretionary authority to behave within the protocol’s greatest curiosity as they see match and are elected in a non-quadratic, straight token majority vote to take action. Kain has been a staunch defender of sustaining a physique with this degree of freedom to behave on behalf of the token holders swiftly when such motion is important. Nonetheless, some on the Spartan Council felt that the Spartan Council needs to be consulted on such plans.

Staying on the subject of governance, a a lot smaller situation arose in direction of the top of the quarter when a SIP was proposed that will eradicate the necessity for presentation when including new Perps markets. Even with full assist of the council, the query arose as as to whether the SIP needs to be labeled as meta-governance or not.

It was later agreed upon that the SIP was the truth is meta-governance, however Burt flagged that there didn’t appear to be a selected set of pointers for making such determinations and provided to jot down a SIP clarifying the foundations.

And the way can we overlook about SNAX chain. Whereas nonetheless not totally fleshed out, there are some locally who imagine an SNX Appchain may be capable of function a central governance hub for the protocol. The thought appears promising, however the council was cut up down the center with some councilors highlighting that the know-how continues to be in its infancy and the protocol has been burned earlier than being the primary movers. We will definitely be monitoring the progress of this dialogue within the coming months.

👉Protocol Stats

Overview of Synthetix Q2 Stats: April 2024 — June 2024.

👉Spartan Council

Q2 2024 Spartan Councilors: Afif, Cavalier, Cyberduck, Jackson, Millie, ml_sudo, Snaxfrens, and Snxmaximalists

Together with their contribution to the achievement of main Synthetix milestones this quarter, let’s take a minute to evaluate every part else that the Spartan Council was in a position to obtain in simply the final 3 months.

In April, the Council took the primary steps in direction of deprecating non-sUSD spot synths with SIP-369. The spot synths generated much more danger publicity for the debt pool than delta impartial Perps markets with out producing sufficient charge income to justify that danger. The deprecation of those synths will finally pave the way in which for SNX L1 migration that can assist a brand new Perps market on Ethereum mainnet. All holders of those synths got ample alternative to redeem them at favorable charges and the change of those synths has been totally deprecated at this level. Customers have been directed to contact the Treasury Council to retrieve beforehand unclaimed funds.

The council additionally authorized SIP-376 which added Ethena’s sUSDe as a supported collateral kind on Arbitrum to scale the deployment sooner and 16 new markets to V2 and V3 together with for the primary time: an SNX Perp on Base! This was beforehand thought of to be troublesome to assist in V2 for the reason that debt pool was comprised of completely SNX collateral.

In Might, the Spartan Council continued its efforts to reinforce the protocol’s performance. As a primary, we noticed assist added for the yield-generating aUSDC for use as LP collateral on Perps V3. As Perps V3 was nearing the top of its early dwell testing part, SIP-378 pushed by means of a number of integrator enchancment requests, together with eradicating acceptable value checks on order dedication and permitting 0 charge perp buying and selling.

Can also noticed large buying and selling incentives added to Perps V3, rebating as much as 90% of person buying and selling charges for 10 weeks and the approval of multi-collateral margin. Multi-collateral margin was a function that was imagined to be obtainable on the launch of Perps V3 however bumped into some implementation challenges. Somewhat than delaying the launch, the Spartan Council opted to make Synthetix Perps buying and selling on Base obtainable as quickly as doable and delay the much-anticipated multi-collateral margin function.

In June, a brand new framework for automating Perps listings was authorized unanimously by the Spartan Council. SIP-387 highlighted that the method is all however automated anyway with no significant objections being surfaced in any of the displays so as to add these new markets. Many of the danger evaluation occurs within the parameter setting SCCP anyway, which already requires no presentation. It turned clear that there could also be some worth in with the ability to get well-liked new tokens in the marketplace sooner than is feasible within the present presentation course of, given the council meets solely as soon as per week to listen to these displays.

Synthetix V3 was additionally deployed to Arbitrum in June and SIP-389 was authorized, greenlighting assist for much more yield producing collateral choices to assist enhance liquidity shortly.

To spherical out the quarter, the council heard and authorized a proposal so as to add a brand new grocery store/pool on V3, coined Degenthetix, to function a sandbox for experimentation with Perps buying and selling for longtail property.

👉Ambassador Council

Q2 2024 Ambassador Councilors: Dsacks, GUNBOATs, mastermojo, Matt, and Westie

The Synthetix Ambassadors have closed out one other quarter of selling the pursuits of the protocol by means of governance participation, numerous DAO collaborations, and group assist. As seen within the graphic beneath, the ever-growing Synthetix ecosystem creates an internet of DeFi companions all through which the Ambassadors have stayed energetic.

The Ambassador Council’s three foremost focuses remained throughout Q2:

DeFi Governance: Optimism Governance (which concerned Token Home and Citizen Home), in addition to different DeFi DAOs (resembling Arbitrum, Gearbox, Secure, Lyra, Aave, and so on.)Integrator assist: Present & future — Guiding core contributors, integrators, and extra by means of the processes of grants, retroactive funding, and different methods to safe useful fundsMarketing Assist: Spartan Areas & Twitter involvement

Now let’s get right into a extra detailed listing of what the Council has completed this quarter:

✅ OP Grants

The Ambassadors remained vigilant of their help of ecosystem companions within the Optimism Grant course of. This quarter, in addition they helped Synthetix safe a LTIP Grant on Arbitrum, on prime of three Optimism Grants:

1. Artificial Arbitrum LTIP : 2 million ARB

For particulars concerning the Arbitrum Grant Liquidity Incentive Program try this weblog.

2. Polynomial Optimistic Indexer: 40K OP

The aim of this grant is to develop a strong indexing resolution for the Optimism blockchain, which is able to enhance information accessibility and cut back latency for customers.

3. Superchain Buying and selling Instruments (Troy): 40k OP

This proposal seeks to reinforce the buying and selling infrastructure on the Optimism community, offering superior instruments and options to optimize buying and selling methods and execution.

4. Strands Optimism Integration: 35k OP

Lastly, this grant will speed up the combination of Strands’ monetary know-how options with the Optimism ecosystem, selling innovation and broader adoption of decentralized finance functions on the platform.

For individuals who utilized for Optimism Grants and didn’t make it by means of on this spherical, the Ambassadors need it to be identified that the choice was purely budgetary. They’ve labored one-on-one with protocols to make sure that they’re able to go for subsequent rounds, which is able to begin on the finish of July. The following spherical of Optimism Grants can even embody the Superchain, which now allows grants on Base! The Council is anticipating to work with many ecosystem initiatives within the subsequent spherical to organize them for this.

✅ Retroactive Funding

In June, the Ambassadors additionally assisted ecosystem companions in making use of for Optimism Retroactive Funding Spherical 4. Throughout this spherical, the Optimism Collective allotted 10 million $OP to reward Superchain builders, deciding to dedicate this spherical particularly to on-chain builders with a purpose to:

1. Incentivize contributor development and community exercise

2. Be extra inclusive in direction of longtail contributors

3. Construct upon the numerous development in developer actions since Spherical 3

The Synthetix Ambassadors labored with ecosystem companions to make sure that they understood the factors and choice course of, and consequently a number of initiatives made the Remaining Reduce:

SynthetixKwentaThalesdHEDGE/TorosPolynomialTLXCopinKeng LernitasPyth Community

The funding quantity secured needs to be launched within the coming weeks.

✅ Governance

1. Basic Governance

The Ambassadors all the time need to make sure that they’re staying clear with their voting. As all the time, their exercise could be adopted by means of their wallets on Snapshot and Tally.

Voting Exercise could be adopted utilizing these hyperlinks:

2. Optimism Governance Discussion board Exercise:

The Synthetix Ambassadors stay a significant voice in Optimism Governance, and their respective OP Governance Discussion board Actions could be discovered utilizing these hyperlinks:

3. X/Twitter Engagement

The Ambassadors additionally put up fast governance updates on X, and posted two this quarter:

Ambassador Dsacks additionally did a deep dive into TLX on X, right here, following the Council’s Spartan Area with the protocol.

4. Associate Assist

Present Companions

The Ambassadors have continued to examine in on companions and work with them on any suggestions, assist requests, DeFi grant help/steering, and so on.

Future Companions

The Council plans to deal with Perps V3 and Synthetix V3 within the subsequent epoch in the case of future partnerships. They’re presently in talks with future companions to construct on prime of Synthetix Perps both as a frontend or in any other case, and they are going to be persevering with these efforts into the brand new quarter.They’re additionally monitoring modifications to retroactive public items funding (RPGF), which seems to be fruitful for Synthetix on Base & OP as onchain builders and ecosystem companions

✅ Spartan Areas

Spartan Areas continued to function necessary group advertising and marketing instruments this quarter, with the Ambassadors internet hosting a couple of different DAOs on behalf of Synthetix.

1. Cyberdex (Size: 35 minutes)

CyberDEX is a decentralized perpetual swaps buying and selling platform performing on Optimism and powered by Synthetix.Company: Cyborg (founder), Config (entrance finish dev), NotAPriest (dev), Picante (head of development), and Mohammed (product designer)Recording right here

2. TLX (Size: 1 hour)

TLX is a brand new leverage token protocol constructed on Synthetix.Visitor: MaxRecording right here

✅ Synthetix Governance Proposals

1. SIP-382: Listing FRIEND-PERP on Perps V3 on Base (writer: Dsacks)

2. SIP-388: Including Assist for EtherFi weETH to Arbitrum V3 LP (writer: Dsacks)

3. SIP-389: Including Assist for Yield Tokens from Aave and Lido to Arbitrum V3 LP (writer: Dsacks)

What’s subsequent for the Ambassadors?

Within the subsequent quarter, the Ambassador Council plans to deal with the next:

Acquiring extra Arbitrum delegations and increasing into Arbitrum governanceOther DeFi DAOs (Lyra, Gearbox, Secure, and so on)Integrator assist: serving to CCs and integrators with grants, retroactive funding, and so on.Persevering with advertising and marketing supportPursuing additional development methods for Perps and Synthetix V3Exploring alternatives to scale synth supplyIncreasing presence in Optimism governance (Optimism Token Home, Citizen Home, Grants, RPGF)Increasing affect in DeFi & DeFi Governance