SNXweave Weekly Recap 109

October 4, 2023

The following post contains a recap of news, projects, and important updates from the Spartan Council and Core Contributors, as well as the Grants Council and Ambassador Council from last week.

👉TLDR

• Perps V3 Base Testnet Competition: Officially begun! The competition will conclude on October 23rd at midnight UTC. If whitelisted, you can participate via Kwenta or Polynomial’s Perps V3 interfaces. Read below for more details about rules.
• SIP-323: Adopt “s” prefix for Synthetix V3 asset tickers has been approved by auditors
• V3 Migration: Following the testnet competition, the current plan is to do a limited Mainnet alpha release with Perps as the first live test for connected V2 and V3 systems.
• Reward distributor design: Duck questioned how fees for Base activity would be distributed to stakers on Optimism or ETH Mainnet and if that should be considered in the design of V3 — this started a discussion amongst the SC and CCs. Read below for the full discussion.
• SIP-341: Add Configurer Address presentation recap
• Grants Council update: NFT website and auctions are live, mint coming very soon! Trading comp NFT rewards have been finalized, team is in the process of choosing a dev for the V3 dune analytics stats front-end, and Sunny is meeting with the devs who are working on the Thales Overtime market on V3. The Governance guide is coming along nicely, team has also been discussing some possible retroactive grants, and the GC has enabled tracking open interest and profit/loss to the Watcher Page, with open position tables coming soon.
• Ambassador Council update: Team discussed Spartan Space last week with Rage Trade, the Optimism Badgeholder Call, the Season 4 Roundup, and feedback from OP’s Retroactive Public Goods Funding Round 3. Also helped provide feedback on Synthetix V3 docs for the CCs, discussed their next Spartan Space with Infinex, future Perps Listings, and the Trading Competition on Base.

Spartan Council and SIP updates

Present at the September 27, 2023 Spartan Council Weekly Project Sync:
Spartan Council: Adam, Burt, cyberduck, Genefaesius.eth (Gene), Jackson, Millie, and ML_sudo
Core Contributors: Afif, Cavalier, db, jz, KALEB, Mike, noah, sunny, troy

First up, the Perps V3 Testnet Trading Competition has officially begun! It started two days ago and will conclude on October 23rd at midnight UTC. You can participate in the competition via Kwenta or Polynomial’s Perps V3 interfaces — but don’t forget to connect to the Base Goerli Testnet for trading! Be sure to check the public notion page for the full list of whitelisted participants to see if you’re part of the chosen pool to compete, and visit the leaderboard site for real-time competition standings.

As far as rules go, trading is allowed at any time within the competition period, but transferring balances between wallets or trading accounts is prohibited and will lead to disqualification. Be sure to also keep an eye out for any glitches and report them in the #v3-bug-report channel of the Synthetix Discord (or your respective frontend integrator). Bug bounty prizes will be awarded based on severity for smart contract and webapp bugs, as outlined on Immunefi. Rewards range from $1,000 to $10,000 for smart contract bugs, and $300 to $1,000 for webapp bugs.

So get to trading, see you on Base!!

Next up, in core system updates, SIP-323 to adopt an “s” prefix for Synthetix V3 asset tickers has been approved by auditors. Check out this link for a technical spec clarification document that explains more details about the changes this SIP will bring.

The SIP for the cross-chain election module is also in audit — the CCs will begin processing feedback this week as their primary focus has been the testnet competition up until now.

The team also discussed the V3 migration, as the legacy market audit fixes are being finalized and implemented. Following the testnet competition, the current plan is to do a limited Mainnet alpha release with Perps as the first live test for connected V2 and V3 systems. Overall, the plan is still to have a progressive migration, allowing users to migrate as the incentives change.

In other discussion, ML_sudo is working on a template to compare the V3 tokenomics proposals. During the meeting, Duck also asked about the reward distributor design, which allows fees generated to be distributed to SNX stakers. With the base deployment only supporting ETH collateral, Duck questioned how fees for Base activity would be distributed to stakers on Optimism or ETH Mainnet and if that should be considered in the design of V3.

Millie brought up the fact that other protocols have adopted a fractured staking model, which limits liquidity availability on many chains. He agrees that fees should accrue to stakers regardless of what chain they’re on. Noah explained that, by default, fees generated on a chain would be deposited into the market manager, which would reduce debt for the LPs supporting that market. They can, however, be sent to the rewards distributor, which can distribute them across multiple chains if needed.

Another suggestion is the possibility of SNX buyback and burn, which could be automated and would benefit any holder of the token. Millie proposed a dutch auction style solution where an initial price is set by the Spartan Council and would drop at pre-determined intervals until the SNX is depleted.

Gene and Adam shared some concerns about the idea of buybacks. They acknowledged that it might be the quickest solution currently, but Adam said he’s concerned that it may incentivize users to just hold SNX rather than stake it (which generates the collateral base on top of which the entire protocol operates). He suggested accruing the excess fees to a multisig that might be used later to incentivize LPs as the protocol scales (they could also be bridged to Optimism or Ethereum and distributed there). There was some consensus on this approach after further discussion.

Next up, there was a SIP presentation last week: SIP-341 to add a configurer address that can execute SCCPs. Currently, the owner address can run protocol upgrades (i.e. execute SIPs) and call permissioned functions, which then execute SCCPs. This SIP would add the option to add another address that could execute SCCPs but not SIPs. This upgrade would allow some flexibility in how SIPs and SCCPs are executed in V3, pending governance approval of new processes. If the protocol got to the point of immutability (i.e. no further code changes), there will still likely be a need for the ability to process configuration changes, and this upgrade puts the mechanism in place to allow that.

Grants Council

Present at the September 28, 2023 Grants Council meeting:
Grants Team: ALEXANDER, CT, MoneyManDoug, synthquest

In Grants Council updates, the NFT website and auctions are live, mint coming very soon!! The trading competition NFT rewards have also been finalized and are ready to be handed out to winners at the end of the comp.

The team is also in the process of choosing a dev for the V3 dune analytics stats front-end, and Sunny is scheduled to meet with the devs who are working on the Thales Overtime market on V3. The Governance guide is also coming along nicely, and the team has been discussing some possible retroactive grants. Lastly, we mentioned last week that the GC has integrated ENS resolution into the Watcher Page, and now they’ve enabled tracking open interest and profit/loss, with open position tables coming soon!

Ambassador Council

Present at the September 26, 2023 Ambassador Council meeting:
Ambassadors: GUNBOATs, Kevin, MasterMojo, Matt, Westie

In Ambassador updates, the team discussed information relating to Rage Trade prior to their Spartan Space with them last week. They also discussed the Optimism Badgeholder Call, the Season 4 Roundup, and feedback from OP’s Retroactive Public Goods Funding Round 3. The Ambassadors also helped provide feedback on Synthetix V3 docs for the CCs, discussed their next Spartan Space with Infinex, future Perps Listings, and the Trading Competition on Base.

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SIP/SCCP status tracker:

SIP-323: Adopt “s” prefix for Synthetix V3 asset tickers, Status: approved

SIP-341: Add Configurer Address, Status: draft