Synthetix Quarterly Report — Q4 2023

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

👉This autumn Highlights

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

Now we have a whole lot of large information to assessment for the ultimate quarter of 2023 and as all the time, let’s begin with the highlights!

The most important achievement by far this quarter was the planning and execution of the Andromeda Launch on Base. In October, Kain launched a weblog put up detailing a collection of experiments that the protocol ought to implement as a way to take a look at 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 help Perps markets and could be collateralized by USDC with the potential for supporting ETH Liquidity Provisioning (LPing) as effectively. The thought was to create a sandbox to guage 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 help for this plan from the Spartan Council, and within the strategy of getting this launched, charge sharing proposals with each SNX holders and Integrators have been accepted for Andromeda. The contracts have been deployed to Base mainnet at first of December following a remarkably profitable testnet competitors earlier within the Fall. Buying and selling and LPing might 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 might be carefully monitoring Perps V3 on Base and finally different chains!

Talking of V3, the Grants Council spent a whole lot of time this previous quarter making ready the Watcher web page for V3. A couple of 12 months in the past, they realized that there was a niche in protocol knowledge they usually got down to clear up that drawback. After a number of iterations, the Watcher Web page was finally born. Publicly accessible protocol stats are an important 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 crew 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 impressive 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 varied 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 last path for the worth proposition of SNX going ahead. As talked about within the highlights, USDC collateral was lastly added as an choice, however it was completed so in a siloed deployment to keep away from competitors with SNX staking. The most important 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 mission all collectively, fearing their place might be diluted over time sooner than the mission 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, however it required some iterating to get it over the road and a few coordination with among 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 very siloed deployment with USDC-only LPs. Some members of the Spartan Council voiced help for utilizing among the new options in V3, such because the rewards supervisor, to carry these charges instantly again to SNX stakers on one other chain. The issue is, at this level, it’s nonetheless not clear that there might be demand for this product on Base, which is a part of the rationale why the experiments are being carried out. A extra elegant SNX Buyback and Burn mechanism was urged to carry worth to stakers in a extra roundabout method. As an alternative of transferring these charges again to Optimism, SNX might be transferrable to a contract Base that can buy that SNX with a portion of the charge revenues collected from merchants. Since this may instantly influence 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, nonetheless, solely agreed to for Base, which remains to be an unknown amount. Whereas the integrators would have preferred to see that charge share proposal prolonged to all deployments, the final word determination was to incorporate it within the Andromeda experiment and use the information 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 even take a look at integrators’ skill to instantly drive quantity to completely different deployments.

👉Protocol Stats

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

👉Spartan Council

This autumn 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 assessment every part else that the Spartan Council was capable of obtain in simply the final 3 months.

Getting Andromeda over the road was the BIG achievement of This autumn. There weren’t as many accepted SIPs this quarter, however the influence of the approvals within the earlier three months might be felt by the Synthetix neighborhood for fairly a while. The quarter started with the testnet competitors, which offered priceless 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 through the Phecda Launch on the finish of the month.

In November, the Integrator Charge Share dialogue lastly got here to some settlement. As talked about earlier, the ultimate minimize for integrators might 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! Firstly of the month, the entire contracts needed for the Andromeda launch had been deployed to Base mainnet. The Council then did the work to handle the remaining obvious 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, through the month, the Council accepted a number of SIPs that went out on the Aludra Launch, including 9 new Perps markets to Perps V2.

👉Grants Council

This autumn 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 tasks and initiatives. So, let’s recap them!

Beginning off robust, 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 aboutProposal drafting and submissionProposal presentationVoting and implementation course of

Governance

Councils and different protocol groupsCouncil mandatesEpoch construction

This information is a good place to start out in case you’re trying to be taught extra about Synthetix governance and tips on how to become involved!

Watcher Web page

The Watcher Web page has been an extremely great tool 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, fundamental staking stats on particular person account pages, and each day aggregated views of your favourite merchants. The Watcher Web page continues to be a priceless supply of knowledge, offering the entire stats associated to buying and selling knowledge and data.

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 supplies an correct monitoring of the present ETH to BTC ratio each minute through 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 menuAn enhanced and extra versatile notification systemRepeatable notificationsCustomizable auto-updating dashboard

Make sure you test 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 mission dropped again in July. The Grants Council labored by the primary a number of phases of this mission, 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 present fewer than 600 NFTs remaining on this mint, so test it out right here whilst you nonetheless can in case you’re a whitelisted person! The third and last stage following the presale might 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 normal 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 identify) to customers. With Notifi, you’ll be able to obtain instantaneous alerts about your staking positions, protocol updates, and different important reminders. These alerts might be enabled instantly throughout 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 alternative.

Forms of alerts you’ll be able to obtain with Notifi embrace:

Synthetix Bulletins: Keep up to date with necessary updates and Alpha instantly from SynthetixLiquidation Warning: Get alerted whenever you’re flagged for liquidationLiquidation Affirmation: Get alerted when your place will get liquidatedAccount Snapshots: Get a abstract of your portfolio on the finish of every epoch, such as you would with a financial institution statementClaim Reward Reminders: Get reminded when to say your reward on the finish of every epochGovernance Updates: Obtain standing updates about key governance proposals and outcomesC-Ratio Well being Alerts: Get alerted when your C-Ratio goes above or under the edge you set

And all of those might be obtained on Discord, Telegram, and e-mail!

What’s subsequent for the Grants Council?

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

Additional time Markets V3 integrationDebt Migration UI

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

👉 Ambassador Council

This autumn 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 major focuses throughout This autumn:

DeFi Governance: Optimism Governance (which concerned Token Home and Citizen Home) and different DeFi DAOs (akin to Arbitrum, Gearbox, Secure, Lyra, Aave, and so on.)Integrator help: Present and future — guiding Core Contributors, integrators, and extra by the grant course of and serving to safe priceless fundsMarketing help: Spartan Areas and Integrator Spotlights from the Ambassador twitter account

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

✅ Governance

1. Basic Governance

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

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

2. Optimism Governance

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

It’s necessary 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 12 months on this space embrace:

Kwenta and Lyra have been the 2 most up-to-date tasks guided by the OP grants programKwenta obtained 200K OP (roughly ~$680,000)Lyra obtained 200K OP (roughly ~$680,000)Cannon obtained a 50k OP GrantThe Ambassadors count on to help many ecosystem companions within the upcoming spherical, together with Polynomial, Rage Commerce, Synthetix IPFS node, Synthetix, and so on.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 path

3. Retroactive Public Items Funding (RPFG)

As we simply mentioned, the Ambassadors are very concerned in Optimism governance. They’ve additionally just lately been extra concerned in OP’s RPGF Spherical 3, they usually created a Synthetix Ecosystem Public Items Checklist again in November. This record outlined Synthetix Ecosystem tasks that have been in search of Optimism RPGF, and consolidated them for OP badgeholders. The tasks on this record have put constructing first and have considerably contributed to the expansion of the Synthetix ecosystem, in addition to Optimism as a complete, by onboarding builders, tasks, LPs, and merchants. Urged quantities of OP have been allotted by the Ambassadors within the record based mostly on optimistic influence on the Optimism ecosystem.

ALL of those tasks on the record met quorum for RPGF on this spherical! The whole 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! Beneath is the entire allocation breakdown:

4. Associate Assist

Present Companions

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

Future Companions

The Council plans to concentrate on Perps V3 and Synthetix V3 within the subsequent epoch with regards to future partnerships. They’re at present 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 necessary 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 autumn, together with:

1. SIP-338: Deploy SNX Token on Base through Base Bridge (creator: Matt)

2. SIP-2035: Checklist TIA on Synthetix Perps (creator: GUNBOATs)

3. SIP-2037: Checklist IMX and TRB on Synthetix Perps (creator: GUNBOATs)

4. SIP-2039: Checklist MEME on Synthetix Perps (creator: GUNBOATs)

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

6. SIP-2041: Checklist PYTH on Synthetix Perps (creator: GUNBOATs)

7. SIP-2042: Checklist BONK on Synthetix Perps (creator: GUNBOATs)

8. SIP-2044: Checklist ORDI on Synthetix Perps (creator: GUNBOATs)

9. SIP-2045: Checklist JITO on Synthetix Perps (creator: GUNBOATs)

Shout out GUNBOATs!

What’s subsequent for the Ambassadors?

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

Pursuing additional development methods for Perps and Synthetix V3Exploring alternatives to scale synth supplyIncreasing presence in Optimism governanceExpanding affect in DeFi & DeFi Governance

👉Finest Memes from This autumn

The quarter of COURSE wasn’t with out humor, so listed here are our favourite memes from the quarter: