The Deneb release

This Thursday (October 8, beginning around 1am UTC) an upgrade is being deployed with several major protocol improvements. During this time, which is expected to be up to several hours, users may be unable to interact with the system, including using Mintr or Synthetix.Exchange and transferring SNX or Synths.

Here's what is included in this release:

• SIP-83: Debt pool snapshots — This is the implementation of a mechanism to calculate and store a snapshot of the total issued Synths (i.e. the total debt pool) value for minting, burning and claiming rewards to significantly reduce the cost of these transactions. Currently during these functions, around 70% of the gas costs is spent calculating the size of the total debt pool.
• SIP-84: Re-enable paused Synths — SIP-84 was already implemented in the Fomalhaut release, but stated that these Synths should be un-paused soon: “SIP-83 has been proposed that once implemented, will reduce gas such that these Synths can be resumed.” As SIP-83 is going live with Deneb, these Synths will also be re-enabled.
• SIP-88: ExchangeRates bug fix (pending approval) — During the Fomalhaut release, an update was made to the ExchangeRates contract to be using Chainlink's aggregator. Just after the change was made, an edge case was found where transfers are reverting if a price has not been updated after a user exchanges into a Synth. This update fixes this.
• SCCP-51: Rebalance and unpause s/iDEFI — As per SCCP-50, sDEFI and iDEFI were paused due to the uncertainty of price feeds after the LEND → AAVE migration. It’s expected that a solution will be live by the Deneb release, and these index tokens will also be rebalanced as per the community-determined weightings.

This release is called ‘Deneb,' which like all releases is named after a star (in order of visual magnitude). If you've got any comments or questions about the release, please come join the conversation in Discord.