SynFutures elephant turns around, a 90-fold surge in trading volume behind the derivatives "newcomer"?

Less than a month after launch, trading volume skyrocketed over 90 times, and TVL ranked SynFutures among the leaders in Blast derivatives. These are the three most intuitive tags for SynFutures recently.

The derivatives track has always been one of the most attractive narratives in the on-chain space, and with the simultaneous launch of the SynFutures V3 version alongside the Blast mainnet, it has made remarkable progress in less than four weeks, with trading volume growth outpacing others at over 9400%, far surpassing established leaders like dYdX and GMX.

This article will deeply analyze why SynFutures has attracted market funds and whether it can open up new valuation spaces with the dual narratives of "derivatives" + "Blast Summer," as well as the potential benefits behind it.

Behind SynFutures Surpassing GMX in Daily Trading Volume: A Rising Wind

From a certain perspective, SynFutures has always been considered a "veteran" in the DeFi derivatives field, having been tested by time and the market:

As early as 2021, when the industry was still unclear about which paradigm to use for on-chain derivatives trading, SynFutures pioneered a permissionless contract market model, allowing anyone to add liquidity with a single token and list it in 30 seconds, becoming one of the widely adopted standards in many on-chain derivatives.

This is attributed to the SynFutures team's comprehensive background in top international investment banks, internet companies, and crypto OGs. Additionally, it just completed a new round of financing of $22 million in October 2023, with top investment institutions such as Pantera Capital, SIG, and HashKey Capital participating.

In the previous A round financing of $14 million completed in June 2021, leading VC players such as Polychain Capital, Framework Ventures, Bybit, Wintermute, CMS, Kronos, and IOSG Ventures also participated. As of the time of writing, the cumulative financing amount has exceeded $38 million, making it a unique presence in the decentralized derivatives field.

Dune's statistical data shows that as of March 26, 2024, SynFutures has been operating smoothly for over two years, with more than 110,000 users and a cumulative trading volume exceeding $23 billion (V1+V2), totaling 8.12 million transactions, remaining active as a leading decentralized derivatives exchange.

On March 1, the SynFutures V3 platform officially launched on the Blast mainnet, and trading volume surged, reaching a historical high of $623 million on March 21. As of March 26, the cumulative trading volume of the V3 version alone approached $5.8 billion.

In other words, in less than a month since its launch on Blast, the cumulative trading volume of the V3 version has already accounted for 25% of the total trading volume of V1+V2 over the past two years.

In comparison, we can more intuitively feel how fierce the growth momentum of SynFutures V3 is:

It is well known that GMX is the largest DeFi protocol in the Arbitrum ecosystem and currently the on-chain derivatives market with the highest TVL (according to DeFiLlama data), but its daily trading volume is currently lower than that of SynFutures------as of the time of writing, GMX's 24-hour trading volume is $270 million, while SynFutures V3's daily trading volume is about $375 million.

Among all on-chain derivatives protocols, SynFutures also leads with at least an order of magnitude in growth rate during the same period:

• On a 7-day basis, the leading dYdX and Hyperliquid have growth rates of -18% and -42%, respectively, while SynFutures has a growth rate of 67% during the same period;
• On a monthly basis, the leading dYdX and Hyperliquid have growth rates of 77% and 91%, respectively, while SynFutures has exceeded 9400% during the same period.

From this perspective, after launching the V3 version on Blast, SynFutures' growth momentum is extremely fierce, almost leaving other decentralized derivatives far behind, seemingly finally welcoming its moment of rising wind.

Does SynFutures V3 Bring Derivatives into the Second Half?

In fact, in the current mature financial market, derivatives trading, whether in terms of liquidity, capital volume, or trading scale, is generally higher than spot trading, and the Crypto world has at least confirmed this market rule in the CEX field:

As early as 2020, derivatives trading represented by contract futures began to replace spot trading in CEX, gradually becoming 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 the level of tens of billions of dollars, with Binance breaking through $80 billion.

The daily trading volume of CEX derivatives is equivalent to a week's trading volume of spot trading------combined with The Block data, the total daily trading volume of Binance derivatives is equivalent to 16% of the monthly trading volume of spot trading in February ($50.62 billion).

However, on-chain, the spot trading volume represented by DEX like Uniswap still significantly outpaces the trading volume of decentralized derivatives trading protocols like dYdX, even GMX, regarded as the "old leader" in on-chain derivatives protocols, has a TVL of less than $750 million, ranking around 40th among all categories of DeFi protocols in the long term.

Ultimately, the development of currently leading on-chain derivatives protocols like GMX and dYdX has not kept pace with the narrative changes------DeFiLlama's statistics show that as of March 12, 2024, the total scale of DeFi across the network has exceeded $100 billion, but the overall volume of derivatives protocols is still less than $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 breakthrough ideas.

For the current Blast ecosystem, the surging trading volume of SynFutures serves as the best leading example, perhaps indicating that with the performance and cost advantages of L2, combined with Blast's own traffic effects, many use cases for derivatives that are limited by the Ethereum main chain can gradually be realized.

Thus, in the future, with the favorable wind of Blast airdrops, the on-chain derivatives narrative seems to have ushered in a timely development opportunity, and within it, how to strategically position potential seed players in this "Blast Summer"?

From a product perspective, DeFi protocols like SynFutures, which are "old latecomers," undoubtedly have the most advantages:

• On one hand, SynFutures has developed the Oyster AMM (oAMM) in V3, combining the advantages of order books and AMM to maximize capital efficiency, which will make it easier to attract incoming funds as the TVL of the ecosystem rises after the Blast airdrop;
• On the other hand, as an established on-chain protocol, SynFutures has not issued tokens, allowing users to enjoy derivatives trading services while accumulating potential airdrop opportunities, thus sharing the potential dividends of expanding Blast and the on-chain derivatives track in the future;

Returning to the data perspective, the trading volume to TVL ratio of SynFutures in the past 30 days has reached 12.7, making it one of the most undervalued projects in the on-chain derivatives track------compared to 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 Achieve "Multiple Benefits" through SynFutures in the Blast Ecosystem?

So, as an ordinary user, what opportunities are there to achieve "multiple benefits" through SynFutures in the Blast ecosystem and maximize sharing of the early dividends from SynFutures (V3) and Blast?

On the same day that the V3 version was launched, March 1, SynFutures simultaneously launched a triple rewards program (Blast Points + Blast Big Bang Champion Points + SynFutures O_O Points), and the points competition is expected to last for 3 to 4 months.

What does this mean? It means that users participating in the interaction with SynFutures V3 at this time can simultaneously receive triple rewards, including Blast Points, Blast Gold, and SynFutures Points.

There are rumors that the most valuable aspect of the Blast public chain is Blast Gold. In the first round of Gold distribution announced by the Blast official last Saturday, SynFutures received the second most Gold incentives in the entire ecosystem, obtaining nearly 500,000 pieces at once. The market generally prices Blast Gold at $5-10 each. SynFutures previously announced that 100% of Blast Gold will be rewarded to users, meaning that just from Blast Gold alone, the value of SynFutures' first round of distribution rewards has already reached between $2.5 million and $5 million. As of the day of writing, SynFutures' TVL is $32 million, with a daily trading volume of $380 million. The official has announced that 50% of the Blast Gold distribution will be rewarded to liquidity providers (makers), while the other 50% will be provided to traders (takers). We will continue to monitor the details of the project's reward distribution.

The distribution of Blast Gold by SynFutures is closely related to the quantity of SynFutures OO Points itself. In summary: the more SynFutures OO Points, the more Blast Gold.

Interestingly, on March 12, SynFutures launched a Trading Grand Prix trading competition with a prize pool of $500,000, and the team, while launching this Blast points competition and trading competition, also indicated that they are researching token issuance, stating that the points program will last for 3-4 months and hinting at a token issuance and airdrop plan at that time.

The latest news is that the project party will conduct the first contract snapshot on April 9, which may mean that good news related to token airdrops is approaching, so the window period is constantly shrinking, and it is necessary to participate in interactions as soon as possible.

Conclusion

In 2020, we witnessed the explosive growth of the DeFi world, where the derivatives track (futures, options, synthetic assets, etc.) was once seen as the most promising sector to take over the spotlight from DeFi and the entire industry. However, disappointingly, the performance limitations of Ethereum and other factors did not bring the anticipated boost to the derivatives track.

As time rolls into early 2024, the recently activated Dencun upgrade has improved the cost-effectiveness of L2, subtly suggesting that the decentralized derivatives track may have a screw that has already loosened.

Especially as the strongest catfish in the new L2 battle, if Blast can bring incremental value to the derivatives track with the influx of funds and increased market attention, sharing the dividends of expanding the track, then on-chain derivatives may be just one ignition point away from a "Cambrian explosion."

From this perspective, as a combination of an established player and a new leader, SynFutures, whether through its fierce growth momentum in derivatives or the backing of first-tier institutional investors like HashKey Capital, is gradually accumulating momentum and is likely to take a completely different path.

In 2024, whether we believe in the Blast ecosystem or the imaginative space of the derivatives track, we should perhaps pay enough attention to seed players like SynFutures.