SNXweave Weekly Recap 38

SNXweave -

May 10, 2022

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.

Spartan Council and SIP updates

Present at the May 3, 2022 Spartan Council Weekly Project Sync:
Spartan Council: Afif, Danijel, JVK, ksett, Mark
Core Contributors: Cavalier, db, jj, KALEB, Matt, Noah

In case you missed it, the SNX inflationary distribution ratio has been increased in favor of Optimism Stakers. Thanks to SCCP-189, the ratio us now 40% Optimism and 60% Ethereum Mainnet. This SCCP ultimately aims to further incentivize minters to migrate to L2.

SIPs 198 and 222 to update the atomic exchange function and exchange fee system, respectively, are both currently in testing. The Council said an edge case was identified, so some tweaks were needed. These SIPs will need to be presented again to reflect the changes, meaning they have been delayed a bit.

Next, the Optimism Bridge is in its final stage of testing. It’s already on Kovan, and a secondary release will be done to fix any inputs from audit. The hope is to have this SIP on Mainnet this week.

The upgraded liquidation mechanism SIP is currently in audit and is scheduled to be done by the 16th. While it’s very possible that it could be out earlier than that, the SIP will also need to go through some testing to identify possible edge cases before being released.

As for the Oil and Ukrainian Hryvnia synths, they have not met all of the criteria that Chainlink has set for feed approval. Chainlink is working on it, but there is no set timeline for now.

The Council also discussed SIP-218, to move the Curve sUSD pool reward to metapool. They decided it might not actually make financial sense, but Kaleb said he would coordinate with GUNBOATs to decide if the incentives should be discontinued since they aren’t enough to make any material difference on chain anyways. It is likely that this SIP will be rejected and possibly replaced at a later time.

Next up, the ApeCoin and dYdX perp SIPs are both pretty much ready to go. These will most likely go out on the next release, hopefully this week, so keep an eye out for these additional perpetual futures markets!

On the V3 side of things, part of the team had an in-person offsite in New York recently and were able to get a bunch of SIPs written. They decided that it would be best to now start walking through some V3 concepts to give the community time to digest and ask questions.

Afif, Noah, and db gave an overview of some of these V3 concepts, so let’s summarize them:

Differentiated debt pool

  • In V2X, you stake, get sUSD, and then you’re immediately exposed to every asset in the debt pool
  • Afif said that in V3, the proposal is that every new synth or trading product will exist as its own market, and debt gets passed to any user who is staked in that market
  • In the V3 staking model, users would be able to decide which synths or products they want to stake into
  • This creates a much more flexible infrastructure

Staking accounts

  • Will introduce the concept of an NFT representing the account
  • Noah said this will allow for positions to be transferred from one wallet to another without having to exit and re-enter
  • Governance will vote on which types of collateral are let into the system

Funds

  • The primary UX will be the ability to stake into the Spartan Council fund (collateral voted by governance)
  • Collateral can be split across different funds (for example: 50% to the Spartan Council fund and 50% to a different fund)
  • Each fund would have its own c-ratio
  • “Funds” nomenclature still TBD

Markets

  • Market manager will allow users to register their market contracts (this is what the individual market implementation would interact with to determine what liquidity has been provided)
  • Noah said the big objective is to make the architecture more permissionless and silo risk
  • Risk of a particular fund is only assumed by those participating in it

Grants Council

Present at the May 5, 2022 Grants Council meeting:
Grants Team: ALEXANDER, BigPenny, CT, cyberduck, Mike

In Grants Council updates, Spreek has provided some feedback on the initial Wrapper UI designs. The team is currently looking for a developer to help build the product, and will be putting out a request for proposal soon. They are also looking for some community guidance from those who better technically understand the Wrapper function, to ensure that the front-end covers everything. So please reach out to them in the grants-council channel if this is something you can help with!

As for the Hero Stats page, the developer has implemented the baseline stats framework. The next step is to do the actual integration and add some other UI features.

The descriptions for the Tools site are also currently in progress — BigPenny is working closely with the community volunteer to get these done quickly.

Lastly, the Grants Council has decided who the first 300 Lieutenant will be! This individual will help lead and organize the 300 group, as well as the greater Synthetix community involvement. And as this role grows, each additional Lieutenant will have their own set of responsibilities that they will be measured by. Stay tuned this week for an official announcement where the name of the first 300 Lieutenant is revealed.

Ambassador Council

Present at the May 4, 2022 Ambassador Council meeting:
Ambassadors: mastermojo, Matt, MiLLiE

In Ambassador Council updates, the key performance indicator (KPI) report is in for April! As a reminder, this new KPI system came from a SIP that Millie wrote to give the Ambassadors more structure in their role. The team plans to do monthly summaries of their performance indicators, which will each be included in the SNXweave Weekly Recaps in order to maintain accountability.

So here’s the KPI report for April 2022:

Gearbox Token delegation

SIPs

  • SIP-224: KPI-based Ambassador Mandate (author: Millie)

SCCPs

  • SCCP-187: Update Open Interest Limits — Increase sGOLD (sXAU) (authors: Matt, mastermojo, Millie)
  • SCCP-189: Change SNX Inflationary Distribution Ratio (author: Matt)

Aave Request for Comment (ARC)

  • ARC: Enable sUSD as collateral on AAVE V3 on Optimism (authors: Matt, Millie)

Synthetix Article on DefiLlama Wiki

Grants referrals

  • Conversation from CryptoTesters Discord
  • Gabriel Haines referred for a grant to produce a video explainer series on Synthetix. Gabriel has a large following on Twitter and YouTube.

Spartan Spaces & L222 Tuesdays

Great job this past month, Ambassadors!

And speaking of Spartan Spaces, the Council hosted one last week with members of 4 different DeFi protocol grants teams:

When asked about their respective grant missions, Max explained that much of the Perp grants resources have actually been directed towards helping making the transition to Optimism. Since their grants program was only created this past August, that has been their main focus in this initial stage. They currently have 8 members on the grants team, some of whom are Core Contributors, community members or large stakeholders. Max said this diversity really allows them to represent a bird’s eye view of the DeFi derivative landscape.

Next, Cody said Lyra grants aims to complement the bright ideas that come out of the community. He added that they try to approach everything with an open mind and support the community in whatever direction they wish to go. The Lyra grants team is elected through a community token vote, with nominees ranging from investors to traders to community members. Part of the criteria, however, is activity within the Discord community. Cody also detailed some of their current initiatives, including the Lyra Short Put which is a community-led newsletter with plans to expand to more educational content. He also boasted the gDAO’s ability to validate and support Lyra’s large and vibrant non-English speaking communities through grants and retroactive funding.

Matt then explained the mission of dYdX Grants, saying his view of the program is that it creates a relatively low-cost way to accelerate growth and empower the community to work on different tasks. He hopes to be able to support the creation and development of a self-sufficient program in the long-term. They also have a very diverse group of people on the Grants team — liquidity providers, long-time users, and investors. Matt added that dYdX Grants tries to think on a global scale, so they’ve funded a lot of non-technical grants such as translation projects to further education and adoption.

For Synthetix, Mike said the Grants Council aims to deploy funds in a way that best helps the community. And in addition to the direct Synthetix community contribution, he explained how they have also done significant work for the broader Optimism and Ethereum ecosystem. As we all probably know, the Grants Council consists of 5 self-nominated members who are elected through a community token vote and serve for 3-month epochs. Mike discussed 2 initiatives that he thinks have been big wins for Synthetix Grants: SNXweave and Retroactive Public Goods Grants. Thanks for the shout out, Mike! ❤

During the Spartan Space the group also discussed topics such as long-term financial viability of grants-funding, recurring projects, varying degrees of impact of specific grants, and much more. So be sure to check out the recording for the full conversation!

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SIP/SCCP status tracker:

SCCP-189: Change SNX inflationary distribution ratio, Status: implemented

SIP-198: Update to Atomic Exchange Function, Status: approved

SIP-222: Update Exchange Fee System, Status: approved

SIP-229: Optimism Bridge for Synths, Status: approved

SIP-148: Upgrade Liquidation Mechanism V2, Status: approved

SIP-214: Add OIL on Optimism, Status: draft

SIP-215: Add Ukrainian Hrvnia Synth, Status: approved

SIP-218: Move Curve sUSD pool reward to metapool, Status: rejected

SIP-219: APECOIN PERP, Status: approved

SIP-223: DYDX PERP, Status: approved

SIP-224: KPI-based Ambassador Mandate, Status: implemented

SCCP-187: Update Open Interest Limits — Increase sGOLD (sXAU), Status: implemented

SCCP-189: Change SNX Inflationary Distribution Ratio, Status: approved