DeFi

Synthetix Quarterly Report — Q4 2023

DailyBlockchain.News AdminJanuary 13, 2024

12 minutes read

Quarterly Report for Synthetix, Quarter 4 of 2023: October — December.

👉This fall Highlights

⭐ Spartan Council/CCs: Andromeda Launch & Tokenomics
⭐ Grants Council: Watcher Web page Enhancements
⭐ Ambassador Council: OP Grants & Retroactive Public Items Funding assist

We have now a number of massive information to overview for the ultimate quarter of 2023 and as at all times, let’s begin with the highlights!

The largest achievement by far this quarter was the planning and execution of the Andromeda Launch on Base. In October, Kain launched a weblog submit detailing a sequence of experiments that the protocol ought to implement to be able to check product demand and market match. He named the primary of those experiments “Andromeda.” With the brand new flexibility of V3, Andromeda could be a siloed deployment on a brand-new OP stack L2 — Base! This deployment would solely assist Perps markets and could be collateralized by USDC with the aptitude for supporting ETH Liquidity Provisioning (LPing) as properly. The concept was to create a sandbox to judge demand for various collateral sorts, sensitivity to charge sharing and different incentives, and most of all, demand for perps buying and selling on Base.

There was broad assist for this plan from the Spartan Council, and within the technique of getting this launched, charge sharing proposals with each SNX holders and Integrators had been accredited for Andromeda. The contracts had been deployed to Base mainnet in the beginning of December following a remarkably profitable testnet competitors earlier within the Fall. Buying and selling and LPing shall be open quickly with conservative OI caps following the Perps V2 launch technique. Perps V2 went on to facilitate $43 billion in buying and selling quantity after its sluggish begin, so we shall be carefully monitoring Perps V3 on Base and ultimately different chains!

Talking of V3, the Grants Council spent a number of time this previous quarter making ready the Watcher web page for V3. A few yr in the past, they realized that there was a spot in protocol knowledge they usually got down to clear up that drawback. After a number of iterations, the Watcher Web page was ultimately born. Publicly obtainable protocol stats are a vital a part of how the protocol markets its success and attracts traders. Since V3 makes use of a brand new set of contracts, as it’s supposed that V2 and V3 run alongside one another for a while, the Grants workforce oversaw the backend growth required to include V3 knowledge in the identical place that the neighborhood has come to know because the hub for protocol knowledge.

The Ambassadors additionally had an excellent quarter serving to to safe OP grants for a number of protocols within the Synthetix ecosystem together with Kwenta, Lyra, and Cannon. OP grants assist protocols incentivize exercise that drives customers to Optimism. The AC additionally performed an instrumental function in getting over 750,000 OP allotted to numerous ecosystem companions for Retroactive Public Items Funding (RPGF) in Optimism’s RPGF Spherical 3.

👉Challenges

Although some headway was made on tokenomics this quarter, there’s nonetheless no closing route for the worth proposition of SNX going ahead. As talked about within the highlights, USDC collateral was lastly added as an choice, nevertheless it was executed so in a siloed deployment to keep away from competitors with SNX staking. The largest concept that has been floated to this point to resolve that is turning off inflation. For these not prepared to stake, an inflationary token presents an funding hurdle. Some traders will keep away from the undertaking all collectively, fearing their place shall be diluted over time sooner than the undertaking provides worth. That is as a lot a technical actuality as it’s an optics drawback for the protocol — upon getting been labeled hyperinflationary, it’s troublesome to shake that tag. Kain, as soon as once more, proposed turning off inflation for good this quarter, nevertheless it required some iterating to get it over the road and a few coordination with a number of the different tokenomics SIPs. Particularly, the Buyback and Burn SIP.

Because the Andromeda launch started to take form, there have been questions on how that buying and selling exercise would accrue worth to SNX stakers. In any case, it was to be a totally siloed deployment with USDC-solely LPs. Some members of the Spartan Council voiced assist for utilizing a number of the new options in V3, such because the rewards supervisor, to carry these charges immediately again to SNX stakers on one other chain. The issue is, at this level, it’s nonetheless not clear that there shall be demand for this product on Base, which is a part of the explanation why the experiments are being performed. A extra elegant SNX Buyback and Burn mechanism was prompt to carry worth to stakers in a extra roundabout method. As a substitute of transferring these charges again to Optimism, SNX shall be transferrable to a contract Base that may buy that SNX with a portion of the charge revenues collected from merchants. Since this could immediately impression the inflation SIP, there was some coordination required to get each over the road and the Buyback and Burn SIP simply barely made it with 5 votes in favor.

The protocol additionally took an enormous step this quarter in direction of addressing the integrator charge share challenge. The ultimate break up for the Base deployment is ready at 20% for Integrators, 40% for SNX stakers and 40% for Base LPs. This was, nevertheless, solely agreed to for Base, which continues to be an unknown amount. Whereas the integrators would have appreciated to see that charge share proposal prolonged to all deployments, the last word resolution was to incorporate it within the Andromeda experiment and use the info from that deployment to tell what the incentives will appear like on Optimism, in addition to future deployments. Along with testing demand for Perps on Base, this may also check integrators’ skill to immediately drive quantity to totally different deployments.

👉Protocol Stats

Overview of Synthetix This fall Stats: October 2023 — December 2023

👉Spartan Council

This fall 2023 Spartan Councilors: Adam, Burt Rock, cyberduck, Genefaesius.eth, Jackson, Kain, Millie, ml_sudo

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

Getting Andromeda over the road was the BIG achievement of This fall. There weren’t as many accredited SIPs this quarter, however the impression of the approvals within the earlier three months shall be felt by the Synthetix neighborhood for fairly a while. The quarter started with the testnet competitors, which supplied invaluable knowledge to make the required enhancements to Perps V3 earlier than it was deployed to mainnet. Additionally in October, there was a minor charge distributor challenge that was corrected by way of the Phecda Launch on the finish of the month.

In November, the Integrator Price Share dialogue lastly got here to some settlement. As talked about earlier, the ultimate lower for integrators shall be 20% of the charges generated on Base. The entire quantity directed to the Synthetix Perps contracts comes by numerous integrators, with the overwhelming majority coming by Kwenta. Quite a few proposals have been put ahead to get a portion of the charges handed on to integrators, and it was this quarter’s Spartan Council that lastly reached an settlement.

December was very busy! At first of the month, the entire contracts crucial for the Andromeda launch had been deployed to Base mainnet. The Council then did the work to handle the remaining obtrusive points which will have prevented a profitable launch. The primary was the LP charge share challenge, which was addressed in SIP-345: SNX Buyback and Burn on Base. The second associated SIP was one to finish inflation in SIP-2043, and the final step was to configure the Andromeda launch to allow USDC collateral in SIP-348. Additionally, throughout the month, the Council accredited a number of SIPs that went out on the Aludra Launch, including 9 new Perps markets to Perps V2.

👉Grants Council

This fall 2023 Grants Councilors: ALEXANDER, CT, MoneyManDoug, sunny, synthquest

As we highlighted above, the Grants Council had a fairly good quarter of supporting the protocol with numerous initiatives and initiatives. So, let’s recap them!

Beginning off sturdy, the Grants Council labored with TerraBellus over a number of months to carry this informational governance information. This information offers an in-depth overview of Synthetix governance and its processes, together with:

SIPs/SCCPs/STPs

How proposal concepts come about
Proposal drafting and submission
Proposal presentation
Voting and implementation course of

Governance

Councils and different protocol teams
Council mandates
Epoch construction

This information is a good place to start out in case you’re trying to study extra about Synthetix governance and easy methods to become involved!

Watcher Web page

The Watcher Web page has been an extremely useful gizmo for fairly a while now, however the GC has been constantly enhancing it over the previous quarter. Due to enhancements led by Synthquest, the positioning now additionally contains favorites, historic account revenue and loss (PnL), commerce historical past on particular person account pages, primary staking stats on particular person account pages, and every day aggregated views of your favourite merchants. The Watcher Web page continues to be a invaluable supply of knowledge, offering the entire stats associated to buying and selling knowledge and data.

New characteristic: historic account PnL & commerce historical past on particular person account pages

New characteristic: primary staking stats on particular person account pages

Bots

Along with their common Synthetix Discord bot upkeep and funds, the Grants Council additionally helped get a brand new bot up and working final quarter: the ETH/BTC ratio bot. This bot gives an correct monitoring of the present ETH to BTC ratio each minute by way of Dexscreener — shout out to EthBoi for his assist with this one!

A brand new replace for the Telegram bot was additionally launched, with the assistance of Nikita. In case you haven’t used it earlier than, the Telegram Bot is a useful gizmo for monitoring staking. With the brand new replace, it has now undergone an entire overhaul of options, together with:

A user-friendly and intuitive button menu
An enhanced and extra versatile notification system
Repeatable notifications
Customizable auto-updating dashboard

Be sure you examine these bots out, and let the GC know your ideas and suggestions within the grants-council Discord channel.

Spartan Synthverse Mint

As everyone knows by now, the Spartan Synthverse NFT undertaking dropped again in July. The Grants Council labored by the primary a number of phases of this undertaking, after which deployed the free mint on the finish of October. That is now in its second stage — the presale for over 7,000 whitelisted customers, with a most of 1 NFT per transaction. There are at the moment fewer than 600 NFTs remaining on this mint, so test it out right here whilst you nonetheless can in case you’re a whitelisted consumer! The third and closing stage following the presale shall be a public free mint the place customers should purchase as much as 20 NFTs per transaction — every NFT is free to mint, simply pay gasoline!

Retroactive Grants

Subsequent up, the GC issued a number of Retroactive grants this previous quarter, serving to to enhance the Synthetix ecosystem by additional involving the neighborhood. A few of these grants included:

Gelato Automated Minting — donoso_eth, gunboats, informal degen (250 SNX every)
The brand new up to date Telegram Bot — Nikita ok (500 SNX)
For open sourcing high-level knowledge analytics and python repos, in addition to serving to up with basic Synthetix knowledge — 0xEvan (750 SNX)

Notifi Integration

Lastly, the Grants Council funded and labored with Core Contributor Matt in October to carry Notifi to the Synthetix ecosystem and assist enhance the staking expertise. Notifi is a number one supplier of DeFi alerts that brings real-time notifications (therefore the title) to customers. With Notifi, you possibly can obtain immediate alerts about your staking positions, protocol updates, and different important reminders. These alerts will be enabled immediately inside the staking UI utilizing the bell icon.

It’s tremendous straightforward to set this up — simply search for the notification bell on the Synthetix Staking UI when you’ve linked your pockets, and click on on it to pick and activate the alerts of your selection.

Varieties of alerts you possibly can obtain with Notifi embrace:

Synthetix Bulletins: Keep up to date with essential updates and Alpha immediately from Synthetix
Liquidation Warning: Get alerted if you’re flagged for liquidation
Liquidation Affirmation: Get alerted when your place will get liquidated
Account Snapshots: Get a abstract of your portfolio on the finish of every epoch, such as you would with a financial institution assertion
Declare Reward Reminders: Get reminded when to say your reward on the finish of every epoch
Governance Updates: Obtain standing updates about key governance proposals and outcomes
C-Ratio Well being Alerts: Get alerted when your C-Ratio goes above or beneath the brink you set

And all of those will be acquired on Discord, Telegram, and e mail!

What’s subsequent for the Grants Council?

The GC has the next objects on their ongoing/upcoming checklist:

Extra time Markets V3 integration
Debt Migration UI

These have each been within the works for some time, so we’ll preserve you up to date on their progress all through the subsequent quarter!

👉 Ambassador Council

This fall 2023 Ambassador Councilors: GUNBOATs, Kevin, mastermojo, Matt, Westie

In Quarter 4, the Ambassadors continued to advertise Synthetix by their governance participation, partnerships, public items involvement and extra. The Council had three most important focuses throughout This fall:

DeFi Governance: Optimism Governance (which concerned Token Home and Citizen Home) and different DeFi DAOs (resembling Arbitrum, Gearbox, Secure, Lyra, Aave, and many others.)
Integrator assist: Present and future — guiding Core Contributors, integrators, and extra by the grant course of and serving to safe invaluable funds
Advertising assist: Spartan Areas and Integrator Spotlights from the Ambassador twitter account

Now let’s get right into a extra detailed checklist of what the Ambassador Council completed this previous quarter:

✅ Governance

1. Normal Governance

The Ambassadors make it abundantly clear that every one of their voting is fully clear. Their voting exercise will be adopted by their wallets on Snapshot and Tally utilizing these hyperlinks:

The Council has additionally been rising their on-line engagement this previous quarter, together with introducing two new Twitter sequence:

2. Optimism Governance

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

It’s essential to notice that the Optimism Governance discussion board is just one space of exercise. Most exercise at this level for OP Grants lives on their Charmverse & Discord. Highlights for the yr on this space embrace:

Kwenta and Lyra had been the 2 most up-to-date initiatives guided by the OP grants program
Kwenta acquired 200K OP (roughly ~$680,000)
Lyra acquired 200K OP (roughly ~$680,000)
Cannon acquired a 50k OP Grant
The Ambassadors anticipate to assist many ecosystem companions within the upcoming spherical, together with Polynomial, Rage Commerce, Synthetix IPFS node, Synthetix, and many others.
As of proper now, OP Grants can’t be used on Base, however the Council is working with delegates/the OP basis to maneuver in that route

3. Retroactive Public Items Funding (RPFG)

As we simply mentioned, the Ambassadors are very concerned in Optimism governance. They’ve additionally not too long ago been extra concerned in OP’s RPGF Spherical 3, they usually created a Synthetix Ecosystem Public Items Record again in November. This checklist outlined Synthetix Ecosystem initiatives that had been looking for Optimism RPGF, and consolidated them for OP badgeholders. The initiatives on this checklist have put constructing first and have considerably contributed to the expansion of the Synthetix ecosystem, in addition to Optimism as an entire, by onboarding builders, initiatives, LPs, and merchants. Urged quantities of OP had been allotted by the Ambassadors within the checklist based mostly on optimistic impression on the Optimism ecosystem.

ALL of those initiatives on the checklist met quorum for RPGF on this spherical! The full pool for Spherical 3 was 30 million OP (which interprets to round $100 million), and the Synthetix Ecosystem secured 767,165 OP in RPGF (virtually $3 million), which is a HUGE win for the protocol and ecosystem! Under is the entire allocation breakdown:

4. Associate Help

Present Companions

The Ambassadors have been implementing a trial this previous quarter the place they examine in on Companions and work with them on any suggestions they’ve, any assist that they request, and many others.

Future Companions

The Council plans to deal with Perps V3 and Synthetix V3 within the subsequent epoch with regards to future partnerships. They’re at the moment in talks with future companions to construct on high 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.

✅ Spartan Areas

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

1. EigenLayer (Size: 1 hour)

2. Valio & Kwenta (Size: 45 minutes)

3. Infinex & Lit Protocol (Size: 1 hour)

4. Andromeda on Base Launch with CCs (Size: 50 minutes)

✅ Synthetix Governance Proposals

Lastly, members of the Ambassador Council additionally proposed a number of SIPs in This fall, together with:

1. SIP-338: Deploy SNX Token on Base by way of Base Bridge (writer: Matt)

2. SIP-2035: Record TIA on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

3. SIP-2037: Record IMX and TRB on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

4. SIP-2039: Record MEME on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

5. SIP-2040: Record ANKR, FET, GRT on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

6. SIP-2041: Record PYTH on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

7. SIP-2042: Record BONK on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

8. SIP-2044: Record ORDI on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

9. SIP-2045: Record JITO on Synthetix Perps (writer: GUNBOATs)

Shout out GUNBOATs!

What’s subsequent for the Ambassadors?

Within the subsequent quarter, the Ambassador Council is aiming to assist information further initiatives within the Synthetix ecosystem on the Optimism and Arbitrum Grant processes. As well as, they intend to proceed: