First AMA SynFutures, which was in the Official Polygon Community 08.07.2021
Leading: CEO SynFutures Rachel Lin
Sam representative Polygon Community
Rachel Lin: Hi Everyone!! Thanks for the opportunities to be here.
Sam: Rachel Lin, Could you please tell us a little about yourself and how SynFutures came into being?
Rachel Lin: Sure. I am Rachel Lin, Co-Founder and CEO of SynFutures. I started my career at Deutsche Bank global markets department specializing in structured derivatives, and later on joined Ant Financial where I helped build its first version of blockchain platform. Prior to SynFutures, I was one of the founding partners and head of Defi and lending for Matrixport, a spin off from Bitmain and one of Asia’s largest crypto neobanks.
We started this project with the observations that:
(1) Derivatives has great market demand. To get an idea, derivatives transactions accounted for approximately 70% of the total trading volume of traditional FX in 2019.
(2) Cefi Derivatives exchanges have a number of limitations including behind-the-scenes mechanisms that have been controversial especially during forced liquidations, operational inefficiency that limits the variety of trading pairs and a reliance of of the Cefi exchange’s own credibilities.
And we aim at democratize the derivatives market by empowering users to trade anything at any time, as we embark on the next era of accessibility in investing.
SynFutures ((@Synfutures_Defi) was able to launch thanks to strong backing of our top tier investors. Last month SynFutures just announced $14mn Series A funding led by Polychain Capital with participation from Framework, Pantera Capital, Bybit, Wintermute, CMS, Kronos, and IOSG Ventures. Earlier 2021, we announced a seed round backed by Dragonfly Capital and Standard Crypto.
Sam: Wow, this seems interesting, pleasure to have you here, it’s been an amazing journey.
I would say it’s truly amazing what you guys are doing in transforming the derivatives market!!
Can you tell us a bit more about SynFutures and its features?
Rachel Lin: Thanks a lot and we are excited to be able to be in the journey.
SynFutures is a decentralized derivatives protocol enabling trading on anything at anytime.
Users can create their asset pairs in a permissionless way, and take leveraged long or short positions based on anything such as BTC, altcoins, gold, hash rate, and real-world assets.
The key features that differentiate SynFutures (@Synfutures_Defi) from any other existing Defi Derivatives include
(1) List any assets within 30 seconds.
Put simply, SynFutures is the Uniswap or Amazon for futures contracts: users can easily list their own futures contracts of arbitrary trading pairs with just a few clicks.
(2) Single-token LP
Users can use one token to provide liquidity to various asset pairs. That means you would be able to provide say USDC only, to do market making for large-cap cryptocurrencies, altcoins, traditional equities, gold, indices, or any other asset.
(3) Rigid risk management and safety
Backed by solid experience from the TradFi financial engineering and DeFi protocol safety, SynFutures has many risk management features (e.g. anti-flashloan attack, EMA smoothing method, etc.) and has gone through external code audits.
Above are among the many cool features we have, you could check out more from our Official Website (http://www.synfutures.com/)
Sam: Amazing stuff!
What are the major milestones SynFutures has achieved so far and what can we expect from you guys in the future?
Rachel Lin: Milestone for SynFutures (@synfutures_Defi) so far include:
- In January SynFutures has been seeded by Dragonfly and Standard Crypto
- Q1 this year, we have deployed our V1 fixed margin futures on Kovan testnet with external security audit.
- In Jun we announced 14mio USD Series A funding led by Polychain
- Also in Jun 13 we have launched our Closed Alpha (https://www.synfutures.com/closed-alpha-signup/) and today we have 5000+ registrations already
Going forward we would continue to level the playing field for the average investor by improving our users’ capital efficiency, simplifying the UIUX and launching new products.
We shall also listen carefully to our communities on their suggestions regarding our future efforts, so welcome to join us on Telegram (https://t.me/synfutures_Defi) / Twitter (https://twitter.com/SynFuturesDefi) / Discord (https://discord.gg/qMX2kcQk7A) for any advices and keep posted!
Sam: Incredible journey, And I’m sure there’s so much more to come!
Can you tell us a little bit about how your experience was building on Polygon and what are the advantages of SynFutures working with Polygon?
Rachel Lin: Polygon is one of the most successful scaling solutions for the Ethereum ecosystem. The deployment process for us has been simple and smooth with good support from Polygon community
We believe it would continue to be the leader in the space, providing our users with cost efficient and scalable way to trade futures. That’s why we would like to be the first Derivatives protocol to be deployed and launched on Polygon.
Sam: Glad to hear!
What will the future of SynFutures in the decentralised finance revolution look like? Can you talk to us about your roadmap?
Rachel Lin: Sure, we believe that SynFutures will be able to level the playing field for the average investor by cultivating a free and open market for derivatives trading. Moving forward, we plan to roll out a number of exciting new products:
- Index futures, such as Hash Rate Futures, the world's first fully decentralized hash rate derivative allowing users to hedge or speculate on the mining difficulty of bitcoin;
- V2 Shared margin futures, including perpetual futures and decentralized futures basis trading;
- V3 Cross margin futures, including a one-click solution for hedging the "impermanent loss" risk for staking in a variety of DeFi AMM trading platforms.
Welcome to try out our Closed Alpha (https://www.synfutures.com/closed-alpha-signup/) and tell us what you would like to improve for future versions!
Sam: Brilliant Vision! That's an action packed roadmap! Can't wait to see what's in store.
Before we conclude, I think there are many in the community who would love to join SynFutures and stay up to date with all the news. What’s the best way to keep in touch?
Rachel Lin: Thanks! Please welcome everyone to join our communities below:
Telegram (https://t.me/synfutures_Defi)
Twitter (https://twitter.com/SynFuturesDefi)
Discord (https://discord.gg/qMX2kcQk7A)/ Official Website (http://www.synfutures.com/)
Some questions from community
Vladislav: Can you tell more about team of SynFutures?
Rachel Lin: SynFutures was developed by a team with an extensive background in both traditional and digital asset management. Besides myself, other founding members come from a diverse range of global financial institutions and blockchain technology companies such as Credit Suisse, Nomura Securities, Ant Financial, and Bitmain etc.
U equilibrium.io: Crypto derivatives are quite complex and difficult to understand. How do you plan to simplify it for users to help on-board users to your platform?
Rachel Lin: Besides all of the clear dox/video tutorials, we shall like to simplify our UIUX and provide a seamless trading experience for our users. Stay tuned for our continuous product upgrade!
skru: Do the token holders have the right to participate in the governance of the project?
Rachel Lin: SynFutures haven't launched any token yet but yes in the futures it would be decentralized and governed by DAO token holders
Djani Sala: How is SynFutures protected from flash loan attacks?
Rachel Lin: We have detailed the explanation in our medium, please check it out here https://medium.com/synfutures/introducing-synfutures-5030fad66354
Maxim Makeyev: Can you explain why the SynFutures might be attractive to arbitragers?
Rachel Lin: Yes with the futures product design, it is ideal for arbi as you would know the basis from day one, here's a step by step guide https://medium.com/synfutures/a-step-by-step-guide-to-earn-as-a-synfutures-arbitrageur-28b4e589ecab?source=collection_home---4------1-----------------------
Vlad Bond: how many types of Derivates Markets SynFutures is capable to support?
Rachel Lin: We support any assets derivatives market as long as there's a price feed. Currently we use Chainlink/ Uniswap /Sushiswap for our oracle with the ability to expand quickly to other oracles
SynFutures https://www.synfutures.com/