Spartan Council and SIP updates

Present at the September 25, 2024 Spartan Council Weekly Project Sync:
Spartan Council: Cavalier, cyberduck, Fenway, fifa, ml_sudo, Ray Zhu, SynthaMan
Core Contributors: Ana, Bex, Kaleb, Marcus, Matt, Mithrandir, moss, Mr.X, Nikita, Peiman, pie, pixelperfect, Samuel, Steve, Tim, troy, wasp in bush

Starting off with a quick work in progress update, new data dashboards have been released. Next, the orderbook perps project has seen functionality added for canceling off-chain orders, and the CCs are currently reviewing this design with Kwenta, who is already mocking up designs.

As for multi-collateral upgrades, the Flashloan tool is on track for its Kwenta launch, there are just a couple of audit remediations being worked on. The base upgrade to multi-collateral PR is also in review. The goal is for this to be ready for a release tomorrow, assuming the flashloan audit feedback doesn’t require major remediation. And lastly, finalized flow for stataUSDC on Base Mainnet in the LP app is in testing.

In other news, in case you missed it, last week Fenway proposed a referendum to overhaul Synthetix governance. He first discussed this proposal with the Spartan Council at their weekly sync, then brought it to the community at last week’s Town Hall. SNXweave wrote an in-depth review of the Town Hall, including the Q&A session with the community at the end. In summary:

The referendum proposal was based on broad feedback from the community that there are about 7 core issues that have caused the protocol to fade from the spotlight in the past year. Fenway therefore felt that if this new proposal were to pass in a community vote, Synthetix could return to the forefront of DeFi. He believes a big part of the problem is a lack of accountability in governance, and therefore has designed an overhaul where the current councils will be reduced into one 7 seat council (with 4 elected seats and 3 CC seats hired by the elected councilors). Fenway believes that the CC placement on this council will ensure “vision continuity.”

And speaking of vision, another key aspect of this first referendum will be a refreshed roadmap. He used the 2024 roadmap as an example — this was scheduled to be released this coming month, but a roadmap this late in the year would not be particularly useful. The referendum would therefore shift priority towards hammering out the details of a 2025 roadmap as soon as possible to give a clear line of sight to protocol stakeholders and boost accountability. 

This referendum would also seek to provide more organizational structure to the Core Contributors. Currently, the CCs operate in a mostly flat organizational structure, which makes it very difficult to prioritize work. Fenway believes that geographically-aligned working groups would make it easier to work through problems in real time.

Next, he plans to form a Synthetix foundation, which would provide a layer of protection for CCs who have had to engage with vendors on behalf of Synthetix (potentially exposing them to regulatory risk). This would also make some grant funding, which has historically been out of reach for the protocol, more attainable.

The last key element of the referendum is to bring the focus of the protocol back to the SNX token. Fenway emphasized that the purpose of the SNX token has come into question in recent months and believes it is in the token holders’ interest to change that. Now that SnaxChain is online, there is an opportunity to use it to the benefit of the protocol.

Fenway’s overarching goal with this proposal is to send a strong message to the community that Synthetix is back, and to bring some energy back to the protocol. The vote for the referendum is still live, and will close on October 4th, so be sure to cast your vote if you haven’t already.

Source : Synthetix Blog - Oct 2, 2024