I started this series with Part One yet somehow landed back at zero; actually, that's a lie. I didn't set out to write a series of posts at all. I wanted to write a stand-alone post but it quickly turned into a shit show about oracles. I decided to try again, focussing on the Treasury Council. So, once more I present you, an extremely late "State of Synthetix" post. As I’ve reintegrated into the community over the last few months, the question I’ve asked myself is “What is missing f...

I started this series with Part One yet somehow landed back at zero; actually, that's a lie. I didn't set out to write a series of posts at all. I wanted to write a stand-alone post but it quickly turned into a shit show about oracles. I decided to try again, focussing on the Treasury Council. So, once more I present you, an extremely late "State of Synthetix" post. As I’ve reintegrated into the community over the last few months, the question I’ve asked myself is “What is missing f...

The evolution of SNX StakingOver the years, the Synthetix community has voiced concerns over the complexity of staking SNX. Given SNX serves as the collateral backing all trades within the network, the percentage of SNX staked is critically important. Although high inflation paid to stakers was an effective strategy to increase staked SNX in 2019, its effectiveness diminished in 2021/22. With the emergence of Perps and its innovative skew balancing mechanism (as displayed below), SNX staking ...

The evolution of SNX StakingOver the years, the Synthetix community has voiced concerns over the complexity of staking SNX. Given SNX serves as the collateral backing all trades within the network, the percentage of SNX staked is critically important. Although high inflation paid to stakers was an effective strategy to increase staked SNX in 2019, its effectiveness diminished in 2021/22. With the emergence of Perps and its innovative skew balancing mechanism (as displayed below), SNX staking ...

One of my favourite things about the crypto community is our deep love of hindsight bias. This is probably a consequence of working in a space with so much randomness. Humans need to find order in chaos, retrospective narratives help create a false sense of order out of this chaos. Lately, I’ve been working to make sense of everything that’s happened in the five years since the launch of the HAV token in March 2018. I keep returning to the same question: why didn’t we figure all of this out f...

One of my favourite things about the crypto community is our deep love of hindsight bias. This is probably a consequence of working in a space with so much randomness. Humans need to find order in chaos, retrospective narratives help create a false sense of order out of this chaos. Lately, I’ve been working to make sense of everything that’s happened in the five years since the launch of the HAV token in March 2018. I keep returning to the same question: why didn’t we figure all of this out f...

My previous post was a long-form exploration of the future of Synthetix. This post is going to take a different approach. It will be a simple 🤷‍♂️ and practical guide to help the community reason about the experiments we must run over the next few months. All of the proposed experiments below would not be possible without the new more flexible V3 architecture, it has taken time to get this right, but we are now well-positioned to rapidly test and iterate. The practical considerations are lis...

My previous post was a long-form exploration of the future of Synthetix. This post is going to take a different approach. It will be a simple 🤷‍♂️ and practical guide to help the community reason about the experiments we must run over the next few months. All of the proposed experiments below would not be possible without the new more flexible V3 architecture, it has taken time to get this right, but we are now well-positioned to rapidly test and iterate. The practical considerations are lis...

ok I need ROADMAP PUBLISHED. like VERY SOON. I cant take this anymore. every day I am checking for roadmaps and it is staying the same. every day, check roadmap, same roadmap. I cant take this anymore, I have over invested, by a lot. it is what it is. but I need the roadmap to BE POSTED ALREADY. can devs DO SOMETHING?? 2021 So yeah 2021… Enough said there I supposed. Once again we find ourselves at the start of another year with no roadmap. Apparently, there is a rumour that the CC’s have dec...

ok I need ROADMAP PUBLISHED. like VERY SOON. I cant take this anymore. every day I am checking for roadmaps and it is staying the same. every day, check roadmap, same roadmap. I cant take this anymore, I have over invested, by a lot. it is what it is. but I need the roadmap to BE POSTED ALREADY. can devs DO SOMETHING?? 2021 So yeah 2021… Enough said there I supposed. Once again we find ourselves at the start of another year with no roadmap. Apparently, there is a rumour that the CC’s have dec...

Infinex Years ago, there was a debate in the Synthetix Discord about what to call our new front-end project. After much bloodshed "Kwenta" emerged victorious, but I never lost hope as an "Infinex” maximalist. Well, now Infinex is back from the grave.brian gets it, Captain jaaq.eth and Goobus on the other hand, major ngmi vibes...Addressing UX Challenges I’m sure you’re asking, “Why the fuck do we need another front end, we already have KwEtnA powered by Samantha?” I believe it is time to comp...

Infinex Years ago, there was a debate in the Synthetix Discord about what to call our new front-end project. After much bloodshed "Kwenta" emerged victorious, but I never lost hope as an "Infinex” maximalist. Well, now Infinex is back from the grave.brian gets it, Captain jaaq.eth and Goobus on the other hand, major ngmi vibes...Addressing UX Challenges I’m sure you’re asking, “Why the fuck do we need another front end, we already have KwEtnA powered by Samantha?” I believe it is time to comp...

Firstly, a big shout-out to Fifa and Cav, who helped review and critique my thoughts on this post. It is still unclear which Synthetix entity is responsible for the roadmap (it isn’t, but no one actually adheres to this aspect of governance). Because of this, you are likely to read a range of roadmap proposals from various authors. Decentralised roadmaps ftw! Surely, some ICO must have pitched this idea back in 2017? Most of what I wrote in A Fork in the Road back in October 2023 is still rel...

Firstly, a big shout-out to Fifa and Cav, who helped review and critique my thoughts on this post. It is still unclear which Synthetix entity is responsible for the roadmap (it isn’t, but no one actually adheres to this aspect of governance). Because of this, you are likely to read a range of roadmap proposals from various authors. Decentralised roadmaps ftw! Surely, some ICO must have pitched this idea back in 2017? Most of what I wrote in A Fork in the Road back in October 2023 is still rel...

Intro This post was originally published on April 15th 2021, on the Synthetix blog. I am updating it, making minor edits for clarity, as well as inserting numerous parenthetical comments making fun of myself; I will use curly braces {} to indicate these comments for disambiguation from the parentheses in the original post, you can find the original post here to compare the two if you are so inclined. April 15th, 2021 As we embark on two new approaches {you can just taste the naive optimism dr...

Intro This post was originally published on April 15th 2021, on the Synthetix blog. I am updating it, making minor edits for clarity, as well as inserting numerous parenthetical comments making fun of myself; I will use curly braces {} to indicate these comments for disambiguation from the parentheses in the original post, you can find the original post here to compare the two if you are so inclined. April 15th, 2021 As we embark on two new approaches {you can just taste the naive optimism dr...

It goes without saying we are living through unprecedented times, at least from a crypto perspective. But even zooming out for a moment the current macroeconomic situation appears to be deteriorating in a way we haven’t experienced for almost a century following the Bretton Woods agreement which established the USD as the global reserve currency. Given this upheaval, it appears for the moment that the days of loose monetary policy, the backdrop to almost all of crypto history, are over. The t...

It goes without saying we are living through unprecedented times, at least from a crypto perspective. But even zooming out for a moment the current macroeconomic situation appears to be deteriorating in a way we haven’t experienced for almost a century following the Bretton Woods agreement which established the USD as the global reserve currency. Given this upheaval, it appears for the moment that the days of loose monetary policy, the backdrop to almost all of crypto history, are over. The t...

With Synthetix V3 now "live," it is a perfect time to question past assumptions to ensure the community is aligned on the long-term vision. This post will focus on the SNX token and its role in the ecosystem.Multi-chain.The Synthetix vision has always been highly aspirational. The difficulty of deploying the Synthetix protocol to multiple chains significantly exceeds that of most other DeFi protocols. This is because most protocols deploy an independent instance on each chain, this introduces...

With Synthetix V3 now "live," it is a perfect time to question past assumptions to ensure the community is aligned on the long-term vision. This post will focus on the SNX token and its role in the ecosystem.Multi-chain.The Synthetix vision has always been highly aspirational. The difficulty of deploying the Synthetix protocol to multiple chains significantly exceeds that of most other DeFi protocols. This is because most protocols deploy an independent instance on each chain, this introduces...

It is now August 2022, so once again I’m late in delivering my unrequested half-yearly Synthetix perspective. In defence of my lateness, I did take a few weeks off to become an enjooooooyer of Paris ahead of ethCC, so I’ve only had a few days to write this. One day I hope to become as prolific a writer as Arthur Hayes or failing that at least reach the output Cobie had for that weird two-week period earlier in the year. But alas, my writing aspirations must wait for there is still far too muc...

It is now August 2022, so once again I’m late in delivering my unrequested half-yearly Synthetix perspective. In defence of my lateness, I did take a few weeks off to become an enjooooooyer of Paris ahead of ethCC, so I’ve only had a few days to write this. One day I hope to become as prolific a writer as Arthur Hayes or failing that at least reach the output Cobie had for that weird two-week period earlier in the year. But alas, my writing aspirations must wait for there is still far too muc...