Synthetix releases 2021 latest roadmap, token price surges against the trend to reach new highs

Despite a significant rebound in the overall market yesterday, almost all cryptocurrencies were hit hard. However, one decentralized finance (DeFi) token, Synthetix (SNX), has once again hit a new all-time high today. The main reason for SNX's counter-trend rise is that its founder, Kain Warwick, released the latest roadmap for 2021 today.

Synthetix Releases 2021 Roadmap

I just published Synthetix 2021. Which is nothing more than a veiled attempt to cling to a sense of power in this ever more decentralized world. https://t.co/qCaWwGqBzI

— kain.eth (✨🔴_🔴✨) (@kaiynne) January 12, 2021

Kain Warwick outlined Synthetix's development roadmap and higher-priority development and feature optimizations for 2021 in an article. However, Warwick emphasized at the beginning of the article that Synthetix has transitioned to decentralized governance, and despite being the project's founder, he still does not have the power to dictate Synthetix's development direction. The content of the article is a consolidation based on communication with core community members.

Due to the complexity of the development and optimization work organized by Kain Warwick, we will only focus on discussing a few key development goals. For the full content, please refer to thearticle. Specifically, Synthetix's main development goals for 2021 will focus on the following:

Transition and Development of Optimistic Ethereum (Layer 2)

According to previous reports, Synthetix activated the Fomalhaut protocol update on September 24, 2020, and planned to implement the final upgrade - Deneb on September 29. The update of Fomalhaut is the first phase of Synthetix's transition to the Ethereum Layer 2 solution - Optimistic Ethereum, aimed at eliminating high transaction fees for users and accelerating transaction processing speed.

In 2021, the community will continue efforts on the second-layer scaling solution to reduce delays in Chainlink's Oracle data through higher throughput, allowing new products - Synthetic Futures - to achieve at least ten times leverage, along with other protocol-related improvements. (Kain Warwick emphasized that only with the implementation of the second-layer scaling solution can Synthetic Futures compete with centralized exchanges)

Synthetix V3

Synthetix V3 will change the SNX staking mechanism, where SNX must be sent to a contract for collateralization rather than kept in a user's wallet. Additionally, when users stake SNX in the contract, they can create a new token eSNX, representing the redemption rights of the staked token, which can unlock SNX in the contract after one year. At the same time, eSNX can be freely traded on the market, providing stakers with higher asset flexibility.

Other features of Synthetix V3 include tokenizing staked debt, changing staking reward calculations from snapshots to continuous, setting position limits, dividing the debt pool into different asset categories, collaborating with Keep3r, using threshold signatures for oracles to avoid extreme data source issues, protocol migrators, and more.

Implementation of Keep3r

As more functions in Synthetix require an open keeper network for maintenance, Kain Warwick stated that the protocol has been working with third parties like Chainlink and Keep3r to complete these tasks.

Strategic Acquisitions and Expansion

Yearn has proven that establishing mutually beneficial partnerships or mergers between two protocols or decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) is feasible. Kain Warwick claims that the sDAO's capital is currently very strong, and the Synthetix protocol is one of the highest-valued and most successful projects in decentralized finance, providing momentum for strategically acquiring other protocols or teams in the field and transforming them into core contributors to Synthetix to rapidly expand development resources for the protocol. Given the current scale of Synthetix, the community needs to further expand core contributors, but this process is both costly and time-consuming, and wastes existing resources. Through strategic acquisitions, some of these issues may be avoided.

Finally, Kain Warwick emphasized that these upgrade contents are only opinions of core community members, not finalized, and may change in the future.