Synthetix Announces Crypto Assets for Legacy Market Exposure

Editorial Team

Mar. 24, 2020

Synthetix's latest update will introduce a variety of traditional financial assets to the DeFi platform, including oil and stock indexes.

Synthetix Announces Crypto Assets for Legacy Market Exposure

Key Takeaways

Synthetix is introducing new stock and commodities products to its platform.
Leveraged ETFs could be introduced to the platform in the near future.
A “pause” function has been introduced for the contract, executable through the ProtocolDAO.

Synthetix’s Hadar upgrade will bring a slew of traditional assets to the platform, such as Brent crude oil, FTSE 100, and the S&P Global 1200. The protocol is entering uncharted territory as the first DeFi system to bridge crypto-assets and the legacy markets.

Permissionless Derivatives

Synthetix may have lost steam during this month’s market dip, but their plans for protocol growth go onward with the much-awaited Hadar release going live next week.

The protocol’s synthetic assets have seen strong momentum, but nothing that overtly stands out, barring sETH. However, plans to add legacy assets could change this for the better.

Data for Synthetix’s listed assets come from ChainLink, which is the leading oracle solution in DeFi. ChainLink already supports traditional assets such as gold and silver for Synthetix, and will just be adding a few more for the protocol.

In a Discord poll, the Synthetix team asked the community which stock indices it would want to see on the protocol. The UK’s FTSE 100 and the S&P Global 1200 stood out with the most votes.

Several members pointed out that leveraged ETFs would be a great addition, but the team wants to battle test ChainLink’s oracle strength with regular legacy products before allowing leverage on them. Just like existing Synthetix products, the new additions will work as tokenized synthetic assets whose price is pegged to an external asset.

Other Protocol Updates

There are other improvements coming to Synthetix in the Hadar release. For instance, SNX stakers must claim their weekly rewards within a specified time window, or else their reward is foregone and carried over to the next period’s reward pool.

Users can also delegate powers to a different address, allowing them to claim rewards for multiple addresses in one go.

Finally, and most important of all, a “pause” function is being introduced to the contract to stop the them for two hours. This feature was implemented to mitigate the impact of sudden market jolts. This can only be executed through Synthetix’s ProtocolDAO.

Disclaimer