Synthetix Quarterly Report — Q2 2023

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Quarterly Report for Synthetix, Quarter 2 of 2023: April — June.

Q2 Highlights

⭐ Spartan Council/CCs: V3 Audit & $10B Quantity Milestone

⭐ Grants Council: Funding Fee Bot & Stats Bot

⭐ Ambassador Council: OP Governance Participation & Integrations

We’re solely midway via 2023 and the Core Contributors (CCs) have already made huge strides in the direction of Synthetix V3 deployment! Let’s briefly overview the foremost occasions of Quarter 2, starting with the highlights!

The CCs have been working diligently on getting V3 launched. In Q1, we noticed a lot of the core system make its means via audit and eventual deployment, and in Q2, the framework for the ‘legacy market’ is now additionally via audit and on mainnet! Whereas this does imply that V3 is presently in a position to settle for collateral, the incentives to deploy capital to V3 should not fairly there but. The primary Synthetix attraction proper now could be Perps, which will probably be getting a refresh to take full benefit of the V3 system. Perps V3 is close to code frozen, and we’ll probably see a testnet competitors by the top of July. So keep tuned!

Talking of Perps, Perps V2 hit a significant milestone this final quarter, surpassing $15 billion in whole quantity because it launched on the finish of final 12 months. A few of this quantity was pushed by OP buying and selling rewards that launched in April, successfully paying customers to check out the product. The discharge of Perps V2, nonetheless, additionally got here at a important inflection level within the wider crypto sphere the place customers started to significantly seek for options to centralized choices.

The Grants Council additionally stayed busy this epoch doing what they do finest — filling the gaps by funding value-add tasks outdoors the scope of CC duties. In Q2, they funded the event for a number of Discord bots, most notably 2 new bots that present actionable Perps knowledge for customers. The primary was a funding price bot that, with easy Discord instructions, pulls knowledge on specified perps markets together with: value, funding price and velocity, open curiosity, and arbitrage alternatives. The second bot is for total market stats together with charges generated, quantity, open curiosity, and fuel costs.

The Ambassador Council additionally continued their onerous work this quarter as promoters of the Synthetix model inside DeFi, whereas additionally taking up an lively position in governance outdoors of Synthetix (most notably as members of the primary ever Optimism Residents’ Home!). As well as, the Ambassadors proceed to make progress on pushing as many attainable Perps integrations as attainable, together with 4 this previous quarter (Mux, Nested, Unidex, and OPX). Integrations will proceed to be their focus into Q3, particularly because the V3 rollout begins to take form.

Challenges

Whereas Q2 was usually with out drama, there have been a pair challenges which might be price reviewing.

As clean as V3 improvement has been up to now, there have inevitably been some rising pains. Essentially the most notable one is the dialogue on the collateral that may again the debt. In V2, the one allowed collateral is SNX, which is taken into account to be a important worth proposition for the token. There have been considerations raised, citing the usage of endogenous collateral, that SNX might not have the ability to meet the longer term scaling calls for of the protocol. Some have steered permitting ETH as collateral, however the difficult half has been attempting to realize a steadiness between creating the optimum situations for scaling, whereas additionally contemplating the place of present SNX holders. The precise means this will probably be resolved remains to be up within the air, and any tokenomics proposal must make it via governance, however there was an fascinating dialogue on the subject in April and you will discover a abstract of it on our weblog right here.

There was additionally fairly a little bit of forwards and backwards on the proposed synth prefixes in V3. Because the define of V3 started to take form, CCs defined that it will be practically not possible to make use of the present synth contracts for each V2 and V3 as a result of it will require a dangerous, pressured migration process. This meant that the protocol was going to must half with acknowledged tickers (akin to sUSD) on main value knowledge hubs. Just lately, nonetheless, Millie introduced a SIP that proposes adopting a brand new ticker ID for the outdated synths to permit for the long-held identifiers to proceed with the newest model of the protocol. This was nicely obtained by the Spartan Council, who signaled that they might vote in favor of this proposal.

You will have (hopefully have) seen that the Optimism Bedrock launch occurred initially of June! This improve introduced main optimizations which have already lowered charges significantly, whereas additionally lowering deposit occasions and bettering Ethereum equivalence. There was, nonetheless, some essential downtime throughout the improve, which at all times breaks continuity for customers. In the course of the week main as much as the improve, customers had been solely in a position to shut positions. Luckily, the improve went easily and the continuing OP buying and selling incentive program introduced merchants again shortly.

Lastly for our Q2 challenges, there have been a few governance debates concerning which council has the authority to take particular actions. This primary occurred when a SIP was drafted detailing the phrases of the OP buying and selling incentive program. Some Spartan Council members felt a choice on their half could be merely symbolic given the OP was technically underneath the management of the Treasury Council, who might unilaterally resolve distribute it. This concern got here up once more when the Treasury Council proposed the addition of a pool in V3 that might basically act as a risk-free staking product.

Protocol Stats

Overview of Synthetix Q2 Stats: April 2023 — June 2023

Spartan Council

Q2 2023 Spartan Councilors: Adam, Burt Rock, Cavalier, cyberduck, Danijel, dsacks, Jackson, ml_sudo

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

This quarter has been marked by a relentless effort to get V3 via audit and on Mainnet, and though there have been no official releases till the top of April, 5 V3 SIPs (SIPs 317–321) made it via governance and had been carried out by the top of the month. SIP-317 was the spot market implementation and represented the primary alternative to check buying and selling performance in V3, and the remainder of the April V3 SIPs had been core system upgrades and enhancements.

SIP-2004 and SIP-2005 went out on the Caph launch on the finish of the month, bringing some main UX enhancements to Perps V2. These SIPs addressed neighborhood and integrator suggestions on enhance consumer buying and selling expertise.

The OP buying and selling incentive program additionally went stay in April, allocating over 5 million OP tokens to advertise the usage of Perps V2. This OP was awarded to the Synthetix Treasury as a part of Optimism’s first spherical of neighborhood grants final 12 months.

We acquired some huge information on the finish of April as nicely — Synthetix launched an IPFS node to carry extra resilience to main protocol frontends! Centralized internet hosting was one of many final remaining censorship assault vectors and anybody locally can help this effort by operating an IPFS Node (no uptime necessities!).

This was additionally the primary 12 months of the 4-month electoral epoch and in Could, we had some governance turnover initially of the month. There had been some Gnosis protected voting points within the new V3 governance module, however these had been resolved for this election. The brand new Spartan Council didn’t miss a beat, and throughout the first week they’d voted to approve the addition of 9 new Perps markets by way of SIP-2014 and SIP-2015 that went out of the Larawag launch on the finish of the month.

Then initially of June, Optimism deployed their bedrock improve! The aim of the improve was to enhance transaction effectivity and decrease charges, but it surely did include some downtime (as we talked about beforehand). Optimism has mentioned publicly that that is prone to be the final improve requiring downtime, and that the instantly noticed discount in charges ought to be everlasting.

To wrap up the quarter, SIP-2021 went out on the Merak launch. This SIP added a stETH/USD Perps market — the primary of its form on any centralized or decentralized change — showcasing one of many largest benefits of artificial derivatives.

Grants Council

Q2 2023 Grants Councilors: ALEXANDER, CT, JVK, sunny, synthquest

As we talked about earlier than, the Grants Council had a profitable quarter supporting the protocol with numerous tasks and initiatives. So let’s recap them!

The Grants Council facilitated their very first buying and selling competitors on the finish of April/starting of Could — the GCTC01! This coincided with Synthetix Perps popping out of beta and the OP incentives, and was a little bit of a trial run for attainable buying and selling competitions sooner or later. There was an NFT that needed to be minted with a view to be eligible for prizes, then 2 weeks got for the competitors to happen. The Council introduced that they might give out an IOU NFT together with 250 SNX, 200 SNX, and 150 SNX to first, second, and third place winners (primarily based on ROI), respectively. Additionally they awarded 100 SNX to fourth place and 50 SNX to fifth, in addition to just a few superlative winners:

Congrats to those that received, and cheers to everybody who participated! Right here’s to extra buying and selling competitions from the Grants Council sooner or later.

Yup, you guessed it. We are able to’t discuss in regards to the Grants Council and never carry up all of the wonderful bots they helped carry to the Synthetix Discord this quarter! This contains model 2 of the Funding Fee Bot — V2 now provides some wonderful stats for arbing for all of the arbetoooooors on the market.

All of those bots have been extremely helpful for monitoring essential Synthetix stats, funding charges, markets, and so on, so shout out to Ethboi for helping the GC in creating these! You should definitely examine them out in Discord, and let the workforce know your ideas and suggestions within the grants-council channel.

Public Items Grant: eth.limo

We ❤️public items, and the Grants Council equipped a 2,000 SNX public items grant to eth.limo in June. As detailed in ALEXANDER’s announcement in grants-announcements, a core principal of the Synthetix Grants Council is nurturing and supporting public items. So to exhibit their help for a decentralized, open, and free web, the GC has donated to eth.limo, an important piece of decentralized infrastructure. Eth.limo performs an important position by offering common entry to SNX content material and actively advancing developments associated to ENS & IPFS.

Eth.limo features as a privacy-preserving ENS gateway, permitting seamless decision of Ethereum Identify Service information and related IPFS/IPNS/Skynet content material (Net 3.0). It permits customers and dApp builders to effortlessly entry and host static websites using IPFS/IPNS/Skynet & ENS.

Nevertheless, the growing centralization of core web infrastructure poses a number of dangers to the ideas of a decentralized, open, and free web. These dangers embody single factors of failure (akin to Cloudflare and CDNs), unreliable Eth.hyperlink service, the focus of ENS gateway infrastructure underneath a single entity (Cloudflare), censorship, the dearth of non-commercial infrastructure, opaque phrases of service agreements and moderation insurance policies, the proliferation of proprietary browser extensions counting on centralized companies (like Unstoppable domains), the erosion of the “commons” and “public area,” and the nascent adoption of Web3. Moreover, most browsers presently lack native help for accessing ENS/IPFS/IPNS/Skynet.

It’s essential to deal with these challenges and promote the event of a decentralized and open web infrastructure to make sure a extra resilient and inclusive on-line ecosystem.

On the finish of Could, the Grants workforce known as on all merchants and anybody serious about serving to them check their new Perps website. This was initially a check deployment, as they had been in search of suggestions for enchancment. The Grants Council has simply been attempting to resolve a problem with the arbitrage knowledge — they want API keys for the opposite apps that they might help (since they don’t seem to be on chain). However apart from that, this Perps website is now totally purposeful!

This was a undertaking that Synthquest led this quarter, to assist make the Stats web page even higher. He met with Flipside (principally a Dune different) a number of occasions to debate creating Synthetix-based tables, what they’re able to/what base tables they might decode, what sort of information wanted, and so on. We received’t spoil all of the enjoyable right here because the Grants Council is releasing a writeup on this quickly 😉

You guys are most likely fairly conversant in this undertaking by now, but when not — the Grants Council has been working VERY onerous for a very long time to carry these Spartan NFTs to the Synthetix Ecosystem. Launch day is getting so shut, we will TASTE it. The workforce has been engaged on the final couple of steps this quarter, together with the location improvement and lore writing. We’ll be the primary ones to shout it from the rooftops after they go stay!!

What’s subsequent for the Grants Council?

Talking of upcoming initiatives just like the NFT undertaking…the Grants Council has the next objects on their ongoing/upcoming checklist:

Working with Matt to attainable fund a grant to make the most of Notifi inside Synthetix (Notifi powers customized interactions and cross-chain communications between web3 builders and their customers — it’s a suite of blockchain instruments for notifications, real-time alerts, and progress advertising and marketing, designed to ship a seamless Web3 expertise in DeFi, NFTs, Gaming, DAOs, and past)Experimental Synthetix market manufacturing facility on Extra time Markets planningProtocol Governance conversion from SIPs to single Doc for straightforward studying: the primary draft is full, the workforce is now in search of second draft enter outdoors of the Grants CouncilIncentive for The 300 to assist check new V3 UIResearch on a neighborhood idea Stats Web page for V3Watcher Web page enhancements analysis

So many thrilling tasks to be looking out for in Q3! We’re trying ahead to seeing what the Grants Council does within the coming months.

🚨GC IN NEED!🚨 The Council can also be searching for an skilled good contract developer to construct a Synthetix V3 market that faucets into the Extra time Markets Sports activities AMM, thus permitting stakers the optionality to delegate collateral to a newly created Sports activities market pool. Take a look at the RFP right here for extra particulars if this might apply to you!

Ambassador Council

Q2 2023 Ambassador Councilors: GUNBOATs, Kevin, mastermojo, Matt, Westie

The Ambassadors have closed out the primary half of 2023 sturdy, logging in a number of SIPs handed, protocol integrations, and extra. Right here’s all the things they completed over the previous few months:

✅ Governance/Basic

Voting Exercise may be adopted utilizing these hyperlinks:

1. Basic Governance

So far as their Governance participation generally goes, the Ambassadors have been lobbying for Synthetix and the ecosystem’s pursuits throughout a number of DAOs. Essentially the most notable of which is Optimism, however the checklist continues to: Hop Protocol, Gearbox, Arbitrum, Uniswap, ENS, Lyra, Aave (and Euler previous to them blowing up). This checklist continues to increase as time goes on, however the majority of their time is spent on Optimism governance as it’s closest to Synthetix and helps the broader ecosystem.

Here’s a broad overview of the Ambassador’s busy few months in Governance (primarily Optimism Governance):

Optimism Governance is full go together with 3 intents of proposals to overview regarding the brand new “Missions”. Over 40 proposals have been reviewedCannon and Synpress obtained retroactive public items funding (OP): Cannon obtained 90.2k OP and Synpress obtained 91.8k OPSynpress utilized for a Builders grant and obtained it within the final epoch (OP)Cannon is now making use of for a Builders OP grant (OP)The AC plans to make sure that the ecosystem is made nicely conscious of any timelines for grants for progress, builders, and so on.Supported Thales on questions associated to milestones and supported them on their grantLyra signaled curiosity in a future grant, however this has slowed as of nowWorked straight with Pyth on their OP proposal — they’re planning on OP fuel subsidies, which might result in Keeper subsidies relying on the OP grants council thoughtsWestie wrote up a overview of the losses associated to OP downtimeVarious different votes/suggestions given to different protocols on governance

2. Associate Assist and Onboarding

This has been one other central focus of the Ambassador Council this previous quarter, and may be damaged into two sections:

Present Associate Assist

The main target right here is on present quantity drivers, which incorporates Kwenta, Polynomial, Lyra, dHEDGE, and so forth. The Ambassadors have been checking in with companions to get suggestions on their expertise with constructing on Synthetix and in the event that they require any governance help in any means.That is nonetheless very new, however the workforce likes the way in which it’s working and the truth that it provides ecosystem members one other space to hunt help if they’ve any questions, points, and so on.

Future Companions

The Council is in talks with potential perps companions, together with Mux, Nested, Unidex, OPX, Mummy Finance, and so on.

3. Printed Supplies

The Ambassadors additionally assisted in publishing docs this quarter, most notably by drafting a GMX vs. SNX Perps Doc and offering suggestions on the Synthetix V3 Docs.

4. Optimism Governance Discussion board Exercise:

As beforehand talked about, the Synthetix Ambassadors have a significant voice in Optimism Governance. Their respective Optimism Governance Discussion board Actions may be discovered utilizing these hyperlinks:

✅ Spartan Areas

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

1. Lyra (Size: 45 minutes)

Company: Nick & CodyThe Synthetix Ambassadors hosted the Lyra workforce to debate their latest Newport Launch and integration with Synthetix PerpsRecording right here

2. Kwenta (Size: 50 minutes)

Company: Burt Rock & JaredTopics of debate for this House included Synthetix Perps, Kwenta’s integration, good margin, and the roadmap for Kwenta & future merchandise.Recording right here

✅ Proposals

1. SIP-2014: Including PEPE, SUI, and BLUR to Synthetix Perps V2 (writer: Westie)

This SIP proposed providing PEPE, SUI, and BLUR perps markets underneath Perps V2

2. SIP-2015: Add XRP, DOT, TRX, FLOKI and INJ to Perps V2 (writer: GUNBOATs)

This SIP proposed providing XRP, DOT, TRX, FLOKI and INJ futures on Synthetix Perps

3. SIP-2021: Including steth/usd to Synthetix Perps (authors: Matt, Justin (Lido), Westie, GUNBOATs, Kevin, Mastermojo)

This SIP proposed providing steth/usd futures on Synthetix Perps

✅ Integrations

The Ambassadors’ exterior integrations this quarter have as soon as once more been targeted with integrating Synthetix Perps.

Integrations outdoors the Synthetix ecosystem embody:

Mux Protocol (in progress)Nested (in progress)UnidexMummy FinanceOPX

What’s subsequent for the Ambassadors?

Pursue additional progress methods for Perps V2, Atomic Swaps, Synthetix V3, and formal BD relationsExplore alternatives to scale synth supplyIncrease presence in Optimism governanceExpansion of affect in DeFi & DeFi Governance