The Pollux release

Next Monday (August 31, beginning around 9pm UTC) we're deploying an upgrade with several protocol improvements. During this time, 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-36: Chainlink Phase 2 — This is the migration of all Synth price feeds to using Chainlink’s network of decentralised oracles. The first phase was limited to forex and commodity Synths, and the Pollux release includes the migration to Chainlink’s feeds for the rest of the Synths. The Synthetix oracle will no longer push rates, and will be deprecated entirely in the following release after Pollux.
• SIP-63: Trading and volume incentives — This update will deploy the contracts required for paying out incentives for individual traders and platforms that integrate Synth exchanges. Please note that these incentives will need to be activated, this update is simply to deploy the requisite contracts.
• SIP-64: Flexible contract storage — One central storage contract, where any Synthetix contract can access storage. The Synthetix protocolDAO can configure the settings via SCCPs voted on by the community, in preparation for the Delegated Migrator to be the owner of all contracts for on-chain upgrades the protocolDAO needs permission to set system configuration settings.
• SIP-75: Freezing iSynths with public function with SNX reward — This changes the iSynths’ purge and update pricing functions to be public and incentivised. The first address to call freezeSynth will be paid ~$50 of SNX as an incentive.
• SIP-76: Chainlink warning flags integration — Integrate Chainlink’s warning flags contract into Synthetix to prevent any mutative action against a Synth that has its price feed flagged.
• SIP-77: Staking rewards contract: adding Pausable to stake() + 2 bug fixes — When a ‘StakingRewards’ campaign has completed, the contract needs to prevent anyone from staking into it. Also, added protection from a potential overflow error reported by Samczsun and a fix allowing the rewards duration to be changed after a rewards epoch has completed. i.e If a 4 week trial is over it can be changed to a 7 day epoch and be plugged into the weekly SNX inflationary supply. This will not update any existing staking rewards contracts, but will be added to any further staking rewards contracts that are deployed.
• SIP-78: Reset iSynth does not trigger circuit breaker from SIP-65 — SIP-65 introduced a decentralized circuit breaker, which is tripped when a price on-chain is detected more than some given factor. This ensures the repricing of an iSynth does not trigger the decentralized circuit breaker.
• SIP-84: Pause Synths Below Open Interest Threshold - reduce gas load of the system by pausing a number of low-usage synths
• SCCP-43: As part of the Pollux deployment and transition to Chainlink Oracles a number of SCCP controlled variables need to be updated to improve trading UX and reduce front-running attacks.

This release is called ‘Pollux,' 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.