In less than a month since its launch, the trading volume has soared over 90 times, and TVL has become the leader of Blast derivatives. It is the three most intuitive tags of SynFutures recently.
The derivatives track has always been one of the sexiest on-chain narratives, and the SynFutures V3 version, which was launched simultaneously with the Blast mainnet, has made rapid progress in less than 4 weeks, with transaction volume growing at a rate of over 9,400%. The proportions are unrivaled, far surpassing those of established leaders such as dYdX and GMX.
This article will take an in-depth inventory and analyze why SynFutures has received attention and influx of market funds, and whether it can open up a new valuation space with the dual narrative of "derivatives" + "Blast Summer" in the future, as well as the potential dividends behind it.
Synfutures is on the rise, with daily trading volume surpassing GMX
From a certain perspective, SynFutures can be regarded as a "veteran" in the field of DeFi derivatives that has been tested by time and the market:
Back in 2021, when the industry was still confused about the paradigm under which on-chain derivatives should be traded, SynFutures pioneered a permissionless contract market model that allowed anyone to add liquidity through a single coin with 30 seconds to list, becoming one of the universal standards widely adopted by many on-chain derivatives.
This is inseparable from the comprehensive background of the SynFutures team, including international first-tier investment banks, Internet companies and crypto OGs. In addition, it just completed a new round of financing of US$22 million in October 2023, including top investment institutions such as Pantera Capital, SIG, and HashKey Capital.
In the $14 million Series A financing round completed in June 2021, leading VC players such as Polychain Capital, Framework Ventures, Bybit, Wintermute, CMS, Kronos and IOSG Ventures also participated in the investment. As of the time of writing, the cumulative financing amount has exceeded $38 million, making it a unique existence in the field of decentralized derivatives.
Dune statistics also show that as of March 26, 2024, SynFutures has been running smoothly for more than two years, with more than 110,000 users, a cumulative trading volume of more than US$23 billion (V1+V2), and a total number of transactions of 8.12 million. It has been active as a leading decentralized derivatives exchange to this day.
On March 1, the SynFutures V3 platform was officially launched on the Blast mainnet, and trading volume continued to rise. On March 21, it hit a record high of US$623 million. As of March 26, the cumulative trading volume of the V3 version alone was close to US$5.8 billion.
That is to say, in less than a month since its launch on Blast, the cumulative transaction volume of version V3 has already reached 25% of the total transaction volume of V1+V2 in the past two years.
By comparison, we may be able to more intuitively feel how fierce the growth momentum of Synfutures V3 is:
As we all know, GMX is the largest DeFi protocol in the Arbitrum ecosystem and the on-chain derivatives market with the highest TVL in the entire network (DeFiLlama data), but its daily trading volume is currently lower than Synfutures - as of the time of writing, GMX's 24-hour trading volume is US$270 million, while Synfutures V3's daily trading volume is approximately US$375 million.
Among all on-chain derivatives protocols, Synfutures also leads the growth rate by at least one order of magnitude over the same period:
In the 7-day dimension, the growth rates of leading dYdX and Hyperliquid were -18% and -42% respectively, while Synfutures was 67% during the same period;
On a monthly basis, the leading dYdX and Hyperliquid grew by 77% and 91% respectively, while Synfutures grew by over 9,400% during the same period.
From this perspective, after the launch of V3 on Blast, Synfutures' growth momentum has been extremely fierce, almost leaving other decentralized derivatives far behind, and it seems that it has finally ushered in its own moment of success.
Synfutures V3 brings derivatives into the second half?
In fact, in the current mature financial market, derivatives trading is higher than spot trading in terms of liquidity, capital volume and transaction scale, and the Crypto world has also confirmed this market law at least in the CEX field:
As early as 2020, CEX derivatives trading represented by contract futures began to replace spot trading and gradually became the dominant market. Coinglass data shows that in the past 24 hours, the daily trading volume of the top five CEX contract futures has reached tens of billions of dollars, and the top Binance has exceeded 80 billion US dollars.
The daily trading volume of CEX derivatives is equivalent to the weekly trading volume of spot. Combined with The Block data, the total daily trading volume of Binance derivatives is equivalent to 16% of the total spot monthly trading volume in February (US$506.2 billion).
However, on the chain, the spot trading volume of DEX represented by Uniswap still significantly crushes the trading volume of decentralized derivatives trading protocols such as dYdX. Even GMX, which is regarded as the "old leader" of on-chain derivatives protocols, has a TVL of less than US$750 million, and has long been ranked around 40th among all categories of DeFi protocols.
Ultimately, the development of on-chain derivatives protocols such as GMX and dYdX, which have long been at the top, has far failed to keep up with the changing narrative. DeFiLlama statistics show that as of March 12, 2024, the total scale of DeFi on the entire network has exceeded US$100 billion, but the total volume of derivatives protocols is less than US$30 billion, accounting for less than 30%.
Therefore, as the most imaginative narrative in the on-chain DeFi track, the derivatives market urgently needs new ideas to break through.
For the current Blast ecosystem, SynFutures, with its surging trading volume, is the best example. It may have shown that with the performance and cost advantages of L2, coupled with Blast's own traffic effect, many use cases of derivatives that are restricted by the Ethereum main chain can be gradually implemented.
Therefore, with the support of Blast airdrops in the future, the narrative of on-chain derivatives seems to have ushered in a timely development opportunity period. Among them, how to take the initiative to lay out the possible seed players in this wave of "Blast Summer"?
From a product perspective, DeFi protocols like SynFutures, which are "old and latecomers", undoubtedly have the most advantages:
On the one hand, SynFutures developed Oyster AMM (oAMM) in V3, which combines the advantages of order books and AMMs to maximize capital efficiency. With the increase in ecosystem TVL after the Blast airdrop, it is easier to absorb the influx of funds.
On the other hand, as an old on-chain protocol, SynFutures has not yet issued a coin. Users can accumulate potential airdrop opportunities while enjoying derivatives trading services, so as to share the possibility of big dividends from Blast and the on-chain derivatives track in the future;
Let’s go back to the data level. The TVL ratio of Synfutures’ trading volume in the past 30 days reached 12.7. It can be said that it is one of the most undervalued projects in the on-chain derivatives track. Compared with the already issued GMX and dYdX, which have ratios as low as 0.43 and 3.03 respectively, it is simply the most cost-effective seed player.
How to “kill two birds with one stone” in the Blast ecosystem through SynFutures?
So, as an ordinary user, what opportunities are there to achieve "killing two birds with one stone" in the Blast ecosystem through SynFutures and maximize the early dividends of Synfutures (V3) and Blast?
On the day mentioned above when the V3 version was launched, that is, March 1, Synfutures simultaneously launched a triple points event (Blast points + Blast Big Bang championship points + SynFutures O_O points), and the points competition is expected to last for 3 to 4 months.
What does this mean? This means that users who participate in the interaction of SynFutures V3 at this time can simultaneously obtain triple rewards including Blast Points, Blast Gold and SynFutures Points.
It is rumored that the most valuable Blast public chain is Blast Gold. In the first round of Gold distribution announced by Blast last Saturday, SynFutures received the second most Gold incentives in the entire ecosystem, receiving nearly 500,000 gold coins at one time. The market generally prices Blast Gold at $5-10 per coin. SynFutures announced earlier that 100% of Blast Gold will be awarded to users. For Blast Gold alone, the value of SynFutures' first round of distribution rewards is already between $2.5 million and $5 million. On the day of writing this article, SynFutures' TVL was $32 million, and the trading volume on that day was $380 million. The official has announced that 50% of the distribution of Blast Gold will be awarded to liquidity providers (makers), and the other 50% will be provided to traders (takers). We will continue to pay attention to the details of the project's distribution of various rewards.
The allocation of Blast Gold by SynFutures is closely positively correlated with the number of SynFutures O_O points. In a nutshell: the more SynFutures O_O points you have, the more Blast Gold you will get.
Interestingly, on March 12, SynFutures launched the Trading Grand Prix trading competition with a prize pool of $500,000. While launching the Blast points competition and trading competition, the team also stated that they were studying token issuance, saying that the points plan would last for 3-4 months, and hinted that there would be plans for token issuance and airdrops by then.
The latest news is that the project will take the first contract snapshot on April 9, which may mean that good things related to token airdrops are coming soon. Therefore, the window period is getting shorter and shorter, and it is still necessary to participate in the interaction as soon as possible.
summary
In 2020, we witnessed the explosive growth of the DeFi world. The derivatives track (futures, options, synthetic assets, etc.) was once regarded as the most promising sector to take over DeFi and the entire industry's hot spots. However, unfortunately, Ethereum's performance limitations did not bring the expected boost to the derivatives track.
The wheel of time points to the beginning of 2024. The recently activated Dencun upgrade has improved the cost-effectiveness of L2, making people vaguely feel that a screw has loosened in the decentralized derivatives track.
Especially as the strongest catfish in the new L2 war, with the subsequent Blast accompanied by the inflow of funds and the increase in market attention, if it can bring incremental value to the derivatives track and share the track to make bigger dividends, then the on-chain derivatives association may really be only one detonation point away from the "Cambrian Explosion".
From this perspective, Synfutures, as both an established player and a new leader, is gradually accumulating momentum, whether it is the fierce growth of its derivatives or the investment background of first-tier institutions such as HashKey Capital, and it is likely to take a completely different pace.
In 2024, whether we believe in the Blast ecosystem or the imagination space of the derivatives track, we should perhaps pay enough attention to seed players like Synfures.