Synthetix could be at a fork in the road, between leaning into a platform model (the liquidity layer helping scale a range of protocols), or a product (full stack onchain perps). Or has the market already guided us?

Synthetix has been through many iterations and permutations; including a stablecoin, synths, delayed swaps, atomic swaps, and then found perps where it sparked a new era of on-chain decentralized trading, and over $50b in volume so far.

Synthetix v3 was envisioned as the generalized version that could provide liquidity for other protocols in the same way it provides liquidity for perps - acting as the liquidity engine for Defi. We currently have a configurable collateral engine, as well as a competitive perps product built on top - and if the L1 perp plays out, we'll have two perps products. Do we expand the platform and support everyone to come innovate and build, or do we go deep on what’s worked for users so far?

Assumptions

• We need to choose between being a platform and a product, as they are distinct strategies that require the majority of our current resources.

• A platform approach has a large surface area of Market and Pool integrators that require education, and support through development, governance and maintenance. We primarily rely on other parties to come up with the killer apps, and take a smaller slice of fee revenue.

• A perps focus is Perps v3 and L1 Perp with configurable collateral, and is deployed to multiple chains. The integrators are limited to perp integrators, and don't require a large number of Pools, and no third party Markets. The surface area for support is narrow.

• Splitting into two groups/orgs that focus on each is the ultimate dogfood experience, but would lose the vertical integration that has worked well so far.

• If crypto UX continues to abstract away the chain, then user-facing chains are less important, and we need to figure out where our protocol mothership is ultimately deployed - cue SnaxChain.

Platform: Liquidity Layer

• Deploy v3 on leading chains, attract LP, and develop the governance pathways to attract Market builders of all kinds.

• v3 has been built to be configurable for many use cases, Pools, Markets and users and so the surface area could be very large if we can attract large trading volumes and LP.

• Platform business models can scale really well if users (Pool owners, Market builders, governance) can participate with low management overhead, but the current ecosystem would require a lot of development, education and support.

• We've historically not been an easy platform to integrate with, and so becoming a platform is a bigger shift than continuing on our product focus The liquidity layer narrative is strong, but complex to synthesize for new projects interested in building here: Synthetix enables user-created derivatives through easy-to-use, user-controlled protocols, facilitating an ecosystem of autonomous innovation where users can create financial products in a permissionless system.

Product: Perps

• Take Andromeda-like bundles and deploy on all the leading chains, incentivize as needed with large grants and become the dominant onchain perps.

• Its an enormous tradfi market.

• We have evidence - the thing works! Building on lessons learned from V1, Perps V2 launched to bring a big improvement in capital efficiency for SNX stakers while also supporting extremely competitive fees thanks to Pyth. Perps V3 is even more optimized for traders/LP.

• Its the product we've seen by far the most traction and interest in, and we seem to be comparatively better at Perps than the rest of the market.

• Its a simple narrative for the ecosystem to digest and integrate with.

• The configurable v3 system, along with Cannon, allows us to easily deploy to multiple chains.

• Focussing on the vertical product allows us to reduce surface area of education, support, but forces us to compete head on with other Perp protocols.

Conclusion (working)

• We should double down on Perps, deploying v3+Perps+appropriate collateral to multiple chains, and go head to head with other Perps protocols.

• Focus all activity on Perps, and focus the third party Pool and Market activity to partners already building for v3.

• Simplify our messaging to perps for now

• In future we can always open up Pool and Market development to more third parties, once Perps are working well and the market signals that unequivocally, we’re ready.