March 20, 2024
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.
👉TLDR
- SIP-364: Reconfigure Grants Council presentation recap
- SIP-353: Improve Protocol Coordination presentation recap
- SIP-367: Synthetix V3 Deployment to Arbitrum presentation recap
- SIP-2059: Legacy Spot Synth Migration presentation recap
- SIP-363: List SNX, SOL, and WIF on Perps V3 on Base presentation recap
- SIP-368: Preemptive Approval for Listing W Token on Perps V3 on Base presentation recap
- Grants Council update: Synthquest is working with a dev to get final comments and issues fixed for the Watcher page. Arbitrage bot dev said the early numbers are looking really promising for automated cex/dex arbitrage trades — they are aiming to have a draft of this complete by the end of the governance epoch. A beta version of the position monitor was also finished, which aims to ensure positions won’t get near liquidation.
- Ambassador Council update: AC hosted a Spartan Space last week with Pyth, and another Ambassador Governance Update is coming soon on Twitter.
Spartan Council and SIP updates
Present at the March 13, 2024 Spartan Council Weekly Project Sync:
Spartan Council: Adam, bilby, cyberduck, Jackson, Kain, Millie, ml_sudo, Snax Frens
Core Contributors: Afif, Burt, Cavalier, David, Jade, joey, jz, KALEB, Matt, meb, Mike, Steve, troy
Last week was a big week for SIP presentations, with 6 being presented to the Spartan Council. Let’s review each of these proposals:
SIP-364: Reconfigure Grants Council
- Mike presented this SIP, which proposes reconfiguring the Grants Council so that it can more efficiently serve the present and future needs of the protocol
- The primary change would be to eliminate the Grants Council as an elected body and replace it with a single appointed technical lead who will onboard 2 supporting positions to make up a 2 of 3 multisig
- Mike’s rationale for this SIP was that the number of inbound, high-quality grant requests is currently insufficient to justify a Grants Council the way it is currently set up, and that this reconfiguration would allow the new team to take a more proactive role in supporting protocol needs
- Ideally, this position would be assigned before the end of the epoch so that they can coordinate with the outgoing GC on any ongoing projects
- Kaleb and Kain commented that the selection process and criteria should be specified in the SIP
- Though this position would be subject to reassignment every epoch, the goal is to bring more stability to grant funding
- The ideal candidate would therefore be someone who can take on these duties on a longer-term basis
- Kaleb commented that compensation should be mentioned in the SIP as well
- Adam also requested that the expected deliverables for this role be specified
- After some discussion, there seemed to be consensus that this should be a full-time position
SIP-353: Improve Protocol Coordination
- This proposal aims to improve development coordination within the Synthetix protocol, ensuring that decentralization does not lead to disorganization
- Cav explained that this SIP would eliminate the Core Contributor Committee, in its current configuration as a representative body elected by CCs, and replace it with a single position appointed by the SC
- The primary objective is to improve accountability and coordination between governance bodies, who will determine the roadmap (SC), allocate funding (TC), and execute the roadmap (CCs)
- This position will take complete ownership of the protocol roadmap, under the direction of the SC
- This will likely be a current CC who is appointed by the SC, rather than an external candidate
- Duck suggested coordinating with Mike on adding selection process/criteria and replacement process language to the SIP for clarity
- The position would have to be reconfirmed every 6 months
SIP-367: Synthetix V3 Deployment to Arbitrum
- Building on all of the knowledge acquired from the deployment to Base, this SIP proposes to continue expanding the chains that Synthetix is on by deploying to Arbitrum
- Rather than waiting to deploy to Arbitrum after the Base deployment is scaled, this SIP would deploy V3 to Arbitrum ASAP to allow for LP collateral to build organically, and both deployments could then be scaled concurrently
- The Arbitrum deployment will experiment with the usage of additional collateral types, including ETH, USDC, DAI, and ARB
- Part of this effort will include a grant application to receive some initial funding from Arbitrum’s Long Term Incentives Pilot (LTIP) program
- This funding, if awarded, would be used to provide LP and trading incentives, as well as support the stablecoin (that LPs will be able to mint)
- There were some questions as to whether the stablecoin was necessary and if it adds any value to the product. Most of the SC initially voiced support for leaving the stablecoin out of the initial deployment, but agreed it might be valuable to have after some follow up discussion in discord after the call.
SIP-2059: Legacy Spot Synth Migration
- Presented by Kaleb, this proposal will add a rebasing mechanism to balance the debt pool skew on L1 and prepare for the transition of spot synths to V3
- This would be accomplished by levying a funding rate on spot synths that track volatile assets
- It would incentivize holders of volatile spot synths to exchange into stable synths that track fiat assets, which would reduce debt pool skew and provide a lever to disincentivize skew in the future
SIP-363: List SNX, SOL, and WIF on Perps V3 on Base
- This SIP, presented by Burt, proposes listing SNX, SOL, and WIF on Perps V3 on Base
- SOL was chosen because it’s the next blue chip behind ETH and BTC
- WIF was chosen as the hottest new meme coin
- SNX was chosen because the community has expressed a lot of interest in an SNX perps listing, but it was never possible in V2 since it was backing sUSD
- They all would incentivize users to shift over to Perps V3, particularly to make use of perp assets not listed on V2 (SNX and WIF)
SIP-368: Preemptive Approval for Listing W Token on Perps V3 on Base
- Lastly, this SIP seeks preemptive approval to list the W token (native token of Wormhole) once it launches and has Perps listings available on centralized exchanges
- This token is expected to have massive interest at launch and by authorizing the listing ahead of the actual launch, the protocol would be in a better position to capture more of the initial volume
- The W token is expected to launch by the end of March
- Adam asked Burt to add language specifying that the configuration SCCP be conditional on the token already being traded
Grants Council
In Grants Council updates, synthquest is working with a dev to get any final comments and issues fixed for the Watcher page. The other dev who is working on the arbitrage bot also gave the GC an update, saying that the early numbers are looking really promising for automated cex/dex arbitrage trades. They are aiming to have a draft of this complete by the end of the governance epoch. Currently, the bot can open positions on cex/dex and run through a lot of checks to ensure that these are opened correctly. A beta version of the position monitor was also finished, which aims to ensure positions won’t get near liquidation.
Ambassador Council
Present at the March 12, 2024 Ambassador Council meeting:
Ambassadors: GUNBOATs, Kevin, Mastermojo, Matt, Westie
And lastly, for a quick Ambassador update, the team hosted a Spartan Space last week with Pyth. Click here for a recording of the call! And be on the lookout on Twitter for the Ambassadors’ upcoming Governance update tweet.
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SIP/SCCP status tracker:
SIP-364: Reconfigure Grants Council, Status: draft
SIP-353: Improve Protocol Coordination, Status: draft
SIP-367: Synthetix V3 Deployment to Arbitrum, Status: draft
SIP-2059: Legacy Spot Synth Migration, Status: draft
SIP-363: List SNX, SOL, and WIF on Perps V3 on Base, Status: draft
SIP-368: Preemptive Approval for Listing W Token on Perps V3 on Base, Status: draft