Synthetix Quarterly Report — Q4 2023

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

👉Q4 Highlights

⭐ Spartan Council/CCs: Andromeda Release & Tokenomics
⭐ Grants Council: Watcher Page Improvements
⭐ Ambassador Council: OP Grants & Retroactive Public Goods Funding support

We person a batch of large quality to reappraisal for the last 4th of 2023 and arsenic always, let’s commencement with the highlights!

The biggest accomplishment by acold this 4th was the readying and execution of the Andromeda Release connected Base. In October, Kain released a blog post detailing a bid of experiments that the protocol should instrumentality successful bid to trial merchandise request and marketplace fit. He named the archetypal of these experiments “Andromeda.” With the caller flexibility of V3, Andromeda would beryllium a siloed deployment connected a brand-new OP stack L2 — Base! This deployment would lone enactment Perps markets and would beryllium collateralized by USDC with the capableness for supporting ETH Liquidity Provisioning (LPing) arsenic well. The thought was to make a sandbox to measure request for antithetic collateral types, sensitivity to interest sharing and different incentives, and astir of all, request for perps trading connected Base.

There was wide enactment for this program from the Spartan Council, and successful the process of getting this released, interest sharing proposals with some SNX holders and Integrators were approved for Andromeda. The contracts were deployed to Base mainnet astatine the opening of December pursuing a remarkably palmy testnet contention earlier successful the Fall. Trading and LPing volition beryllium unfastened soon with blimpish OI caps pursuing the Perps V2 merchandise strategy. Perps V2 went connected to facilitate $43 cardinal successful trading measurement aft its dilatory start, truthful we volition beryllium intimately monitoring Perps V3 connected Base and yet different chains!

Speaking of V3, the Grants Council spent a batch of clip this past 4th preparing the Watcher page for V3. About a twelvemonth ago, they realized that determination was a spread successful protocol information and they acceptable retired to lick that problem. After respective iterations, the Watcher Page was yet born. Publicly disposable protocol stats are a important portion of however the protocol markets its occurrence and attracts investors. Since V3 uses a caller acceptable of contracts, arsenic it is intended that V2 and V3 tally alongside each different for immoderate time, the Grants squad oversaw the backend improvement required to incorporated V3 information successful the aforesaid spot that the assemblage has travel to cognize arsenic the hub for protocol data.

The Ambassadors besides had an outstanding 4th helping to unafraid OP grants for a fewer protocols successful the Synthetix ecosystem including Kwenta, Lyra, and Cannon. OP grants assistance protocols incentivize enactment that drives users to Optimism. The AC besides played an instrumental relation successful getting implicit 750,000 OP allocated to assorted ecosystem partners for Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF) successful Optimism’s RPGF Round 3.

👉Challenges

Though immoderate headway was made connected tokenomics this quarter, determination is inactive nary last absorption for the worth proposition of SNX going forward. As mentioned successful the highlights, USDC collateral was yet added arsenic an option, but it was done truthful successful a siloed deployment to debar contention with SNX staking. The biggest thought that has been floated truthful acold to resoluteness this is turning disconnected inflation. For those not consenting to stake, an inflationary token presents an concern hurdle. Some investors volition debar the task each together, fearing their presumption volition beryllium diluted implicit clip faster than the task adds value. This is arsenic overmuch a method world arsenic it is an optics occupation for the protocol — once you person been labeled hyperinflationary, it is hard to shingle that tag. Kain, erstwhile again, projected turning disconnected inflation for bully this quarter, but it required immoderate iterating to get it implicit the enactment and immoderate coordination with immoderate of the different tokenomics SIPs. Specifically, the Buyback and Burn SIP.

As the Andromeda merchandise began to instrumentality shape, determination were questions astir however that trading enactment would accrue worth to SNX stakers. After all, it was to beryllium a wholly siloed deployment with USDC-only LPs. Some members of the Spartan Council voiced enactment for utilizing immoderate of the caller features successful V3, specified arsenic the rewards manager, to bring those fees straight backmost to SNX stakers connected different chain. The occupation is, astatine this point, it’s inactive not wide that determination volition beryllium request for this merchandise connected Base, which is portion of the crushed wherefore the experiments are being conducted. A much elegant SNX Buyback and Burn mechanics was suggested to bring worth to stakers successful a much roundabout way. Instead of transferring those fees backmost to Optimism, SNX volition beryllium transferrable to a declaration Base that volition acquisition that SNX with a information of the interest revenues collected from traders. Since this would straight interaction the ostentation SIP, determination was immoderate coordination required to get some implicit the enactment and the Buyback and Burn SIP conscionable hardly made it with 5 votes successful favor.

The protocol besides took a large measurement this 4th towards addressing the integrator interest share issue. The last divided for the Base deployment is acceptable astatine 20% for Integrators, 40% for SNX stakers and 40% for Base LPs. This was, however, lone agreed to for Base, which is inactive an chartless quantity. While the integrators would person liked to spot that interest stock connection extended to each deployments, the eventual determination was to see it successful the Andromeda experimentation and usage the information from that deployment to pass what the incentives volition look similar connected Optimism, arsenic good arsenic aboriginal deployments. In summation to investigating request for Perps connected Base, this volition besides trial integrators’ quality to straight thrust measurement to antithetic deployments.

👉Protocol Stats

Overview of Synthetix Q4 Stats: October 2023 — December 2023

👉Spartan Council

Q4 2023 Spartan Councilors: Adam, Burt Rock, cyberduck, Genefaesius.eth, Jackson, Kain, Millie, ml_sudo

Along with their publication to the accomplishment of large Synthetix milestones this epoch, let’s instrumentality a infinitesimal to reappraisal everything other that the Spartan Council was capable to execute successful conscionable the past 3 months.

Getting Andromeda implicit the enactment was the BIG accomplishment of Q4. There weren’t arsenic galore approved SIPs this quarter, but the interaction of the approvals successful the erstwhile 3 months volition beryllium felt by the Synthetix assemblage for rather immoderate time. The 4th began with the testnet competition, which provided invaluable information to marque the indispensable improvements to Perps V3 earlier it was deployed to mainnet. Also successful October, determination was a insignificant interest distributor contented that was corrected via the Phecda Release astatine the extremity of the month.

In November, the Integrator Fee Share treatment yet came to immoderate agreement. As mentioned earlier, the last chopped for integrators volition beryllium 20% of the fees generated connected Base. All of the measurement directed to the Synthetix Perps contracts comes done assorted integrators, with the immense bulk coming done Kwenta. Numerous proposals person been enactment guardant to get a information of the fees passed connected to integrators, and it was this quarter’s Spartan Council that yet reached an agreement.

December was very busy! At the opening of the month, each of the contracts indispensable for the Andromeda merchandise had been deployed to Base mainnet. The Council past did the enactment to code the remaining glaring issues that whitethorn person prevented a palmy launch. The archetypal was the LP interest stock issue, which was addressed successful SIP-345: SNX Buyback and Burn connected Base. The 2nd related SIP was 1 to extremity ostentation successful SIP-2043, and the past measurement was to configure the Andromeda merchandise to alteration USDC collateral successful SIP-348. Also, during the month, the Council approved respective SIPs that went retired connected the Aludra Release, adding 9 caller Perps markets to Perps V2.

👉Grants Council

Q4 2023 Grants Councilors: ALEXANDER, CT, MoneyManDoug, sunny, synthquest

As we highlighted above, the Grants Council had a beauteous bully 4th of supporting the protocol with assorted projects and initiatives. So, let’s recap them!

Starting disconnected strong, the Grants Council worked with TerraBellus implicit respective months to bring this informational governance guide. This usher gives an in-depth overview of Synthetix governance and its processes, including:

SIPs/SCCPs/STPs

How connection ideas travel about
Proposal drafting and submission
Proposal presentation
Voting and implementation process

Governance

Councils and different protocol groups
Council mandates
Epoch structure

This usher is simply a large spot to commencement if you’re looking to larn much astir Synthetix governance and however to get involved!

Watcher Page

The Watcher Page has been an incredibly utile instrumentality for rather immoderate clip now, but the GC has been continuously improving it implicit the past quarter. Thanks to improvements led by Synthquest, the tract present besides includes favorites, humanities relationship nett and nonaccomplishment (PnL), commercialized past connected idiosyncratic relationship pages, basal staking stats connected idiosyncratic relationship pages, and regular aggregated views of your favourite traders. The Watcher Page continues to beryllium a invaluable root of information, providing each of the stats related to trading information and information.

Bots

In summation to their regular Synthetix Discord bot attraction and payments, the Grants Council besides helped get a caller bot up and moving past quarter: the ETH/BTC ratio bot. This bot provides an close tracking of the existent ETH to BTC ratio each infinitesimal via Dexscreener — shout retired to EthBoi for his assistance with this one!

A caller update for the Telegram bot was besides released, with the assistance of Nikita. In lawsuit you haven’t utilized it before, the Telegram Bot is simply a utile instrumentality for monitoring staking. With the caller update, it has present undergone a implicit overhaul of features, including:

A user-friendly and intuitive fastener menu
An enhanced and much flexible notification system
Repeatable notifications
Customizable auto-updating dashboard

Be definite to cheque these bots out, and fto the GC cognize your thoughts and feedback successful the grants-council Discord channel.

Spartan Synthverse Mint

As we each cognize by now, the Spartan Synthverse NFT task dropped backmost successful July. The Grants Council worked done the archetypal respective phases of this project, and past deployed the escaped mint astatine the extremity of October. This is present successful its 2nd stage — the presale for implicit 7,000 whitelisted users, with a maximum of 1 NFT per transaction. There are presently less than 600 NFTs remaining successful this mint, truthful cheque it retired here portion you inactive tin if you’re a whitelisted user! The 3rd and last signifier pursuing the presale volition beryllium a nationalist escaped mint wherever users tin bargain up to 20 NFTs per transaction — each NFT is escaped to mint, conscionable wage gas!

Retroactive Grants

Next up, the GC issued respective Retroactive grants this past quarter, helping to amended the Synthetix ecosystem by further involving the community. Some of these grants included:

Gelato Automated Minting — donoso_eth, gunboats, casual degen (250 SNX each)
The caller updated Telegram Bot — Nikita k (500 SNX)
For unfastened sourcing high-level information analytics and python repos, arsenic good arsenic helping up with wide Synthetix data — 0xEvan (750 SNX)

Notifi Integration

Lastly, the Grants Council funded and worked with Core Contributor Matt successful October to bring Notifi to the Synthetix ecosystem and assistance amended the staking experience. Notifi is simply a starring supplier of DeFi alerts that brings real-time notifications (hence the name) to users. With Notifi, you tin person instant alerts astir your staking positions, protocol updates, and different indispensable reminders. These alerts tin beryllium enabled straight wrong the staking UI utilizing the doorbell icon.

It’s ace casual to acceptable this up — just look for the notification doorbell connected the Synthetix Staking UI erstwhile you’ve connected your wallet, and click connected it to prime and activate the alerts of your choice.

Types of alerts you tin person with Notifi include:

Synthetix Announcements: Stay updated with important updates and Alpha straight from Synthetix
Liquidation Warning: Get alerted erstwhile you’re flagged for liquidation
Liquidation Confirmation: Get alerted erstwhile your presumption gets liquidated
Account Snapshots: Get a summary of your portfolio astatine the extremity of each epoch, similar you would with a slope statement
Claim Reward Reminders: Get reminded erstwhile to assertion your reward astatine the extremity of each epoch
Governance Updates: Receive presumption updates astir cardinal governance proposals and outcomes
C-Ratio Health Alerts: Get alerted erstwhile your C-Ratio goes supra oregon beneath the threshold you set

And each of these tin beryllium received connected Discord, Telegram, and email!

What’s adjacent for the Grants Council?

The GC has the pursuing items connected their ongoing/upcoming list:

Overtime Markets V3 integration
Debt Migration UI

These person some been successful the works for a while, truthful we’ll support you updated connected their advancement passim the adjacent quarter!

👉 Ambassador Council

Q4 2023 Ambassador Councilors: GUNBOATs, Kevin, mastermojo, Matt, Westie

In Quarter 4, the Ambassadors continued to beforehand Synthetix done their governance participation, partnerships, nationalist goods engagement and more. The Council had 3 main focuses during Q4:

DeFi Governance: Optimism Governance (which progressive Token House and Citizen House) and different DeFi DAOs (such arsenic Arbitrum, Gearbox, Safe, Lyra, Aave, etc.)
Integrator support: Current and future — guiding Core Contributors, integrators, and much done the assistance process and helping unafraid invaluable funds
Marketing support: Spartan Spaces and Integrator Spotlights from the Ambassador twitter account

Now let’s get into a much elaborate database of what the Ambassador Council accomplished this past quarter:

✅ Governance

1. General Governance

The Ambassadors marque it abundantly wide that each of their voting is completely transparent. Their voting enactment tin beryllium followed done their wallets connected Snapshot and Tally utilizing these links:

Snapshot
Optimism Snapshot
Arb Snapshot
Tally
Optimism Tally

The Council has besides been expanding their online engagement this past quarter, including introducing 2 caller Twitter series:

Synthetix Ambassadors Governance Updates: October, November, and December
Synthetix Ambassadors Project Spotlight: Polynomial and Kwenta

2. Optimism Governance

The Synthetix Ambassadors stay a large dependable successful Optimism Governance, and their respective OP Governance Forum Activities tin beryllium recovered utilizing these links:

It’s important to enactment that the Optimism Governance forum is lone one country of activity. Most enactment astatine this constituent for OP Grants lives connected their Charmverse & Discord. Highlights for the twelvemonth successful this country include:

Kwenta and Lyra were the 2 astir caller projects guided done the OP grants program
Kwenta received 200K OP (roughly ~$680,000)
Lyra received 200K OP (roughly ~$680,000)
Cannon received a 50k OP Grant
The Ambassadors expect to enactment galore ecosystem partners successful the upcoming round, including Polynomial, Rage Trade, Synthetix IPFS node, Synthetix, etc.
As of close now, OP Grants cannot beryllium utilized connected Base, but the Council is moving with delegates/the OP instauration to determination successful that direction

3. Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPFG)

As we conscionable discussed, the Ambassadors are precise progressive successful Optimism governance. They person besides precocious been much progressive successful OP’s RPGF Round 3, and they created a Synthetix Ecosystem Public Goods List backmost successful November. This database outlined Synthetix Ecosystem projects that were seeking Optimism RPGF, and consolidated them for OP badgeholders. The projects connected this database person enactment gathering archetypal and person importantly contributed to the maturation of the Synthetix ecosystem, arsenic good arsenic Optimism arsenic a whole, by onboarding developers, projects, LPs, and traders. Suggested amounts of OP were allocated by the Ambassadors successful the database based connected affirmative interaction connected the Optimism ecosystem.

ALL of these projects connected the database met quorum for RPGF successful this round! The full excavation for Round 3 was 30 cardinal OP (which translates to astir $100 million), and the Synthetix Ecosystem secured 767,165 OP successful RPGF (almost $3 million), which is simply a HUGE triumph for the protocol and ecosystem! Below is the full allocation breakdown:

4. Partner Support

Current Partners

The Ambassadors person been implementing a proceedings this past 4th wherever they cheque successful connected Partners and enactment with them connected immoderate feedback they have, immoderate enactment that they request, etc.

Future Partners

The Council plans to absorption connected Perps V3 and Synthetix V3 successful the adjacent epoch erstwhile it comes to aboriginal partnerships. They are presently successful talks with aboriginal partners to physique connected apical of Synthetix Perps, either arsenic a frontend oregon otherwise, and they volition beryllium continuing these efforts into the caller quarter.

✅ Spartan Spaces

Spartan Spaces continued to service arsenic important assemblage selling tools this quarter, with the Ambassadors hosting different DAOs connected behalf of Synthetix.

1. EigenLayer (Length: 1 hour)

Guest: Sreera
Recording here

2. Valio & Kwenta (Length: 45 minutes)

Guests: Karlis, Burt
Recording here

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

Guests: David, bilby
Recording here

4. Andromeda connected Base Release with CCs (Length: 50 minutes)

Guests: Afif, Sunny, Noah
Recording here

✅ Synthetix Governance Proposals

Lastly, members of the Ambassador Council besides projected respective SIPs successful Q4, including:

1. SIP-338: Deploy SNX Token connected Base via Base Bridge (author: Matt)

2. SIP-2035: List TIA connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

3. SIP-2037: List IMX and TRB connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

4. SIP-2039: List MEME connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

5. SIP-2040: List ANKR, FET, GRT connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

6. SIP-2041: List PYTH connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

7. SIP-2042: List BONK connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

8. SIP-2044: List ORDI connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

Vote inactive pending

9. SIP-2045: List JITO connected Synthetix Perps (author: GUNBOATs)

Vote inactive pending

Shout retired GUNBOATs!

What’s adjacent for the Ambassadors?

In the adjacent quarter, the Ambassador Council is aiming to assistance usher further projects successful the Synthetix ecosystem connected the Optimism and Arbitrum Grant processes. In addition, they mean to continue: