Exploring The Synonym Ecosystem

One factor that separates DeFi apart from the traditional financial industry is the pervasive appetite for collaboration. We realize that in order for DeFi to create and maintain a successful ecosystem of products, we need to form synergistic relationships with teams who share similar goals and are creating similar products.

Our ecosystem of partnerships and collaborations have two fronts. First, there’s the group of New Order DAO-incubated projects which we gain access to via the Synonym/New Order merger. The second front includes teams whose primary focus is on creating a thriving cross-chain DeFi economy.

New Order DAO Ecosystem

Our merger with New Order DAO comes with many benefits such as valuable partnerships — this creates strategic opportunities in terms of financial stability, user incentivization, and future synergistic growth.

From a financial perspective, Synonym is inheriting the New Order DAO Treasury, which includes the following token stakes in several reputable New Order-incubated projects:

• 3.9% of $BTRFLY
• 2.5% of $Y2K
• Token rights for New Order’s Basecamp projects in phases 1 and 3
• Additional ~2M in other assets

We can also use this opportunity to grow alongside some of the most promising projects in DeFi.

Redacted Cartel

Redacted is among the most innovative and influential projects in DeFi, offering unique solutions such as:

• Hidden Hand — incentive marketplace
• Pirex — liquid token wrappers
• Dinero — LST-backed stablecoin with custom RPC

Synonym’s money market can be used in conjunction with Redacted to create yield-bearing strategies.

For example, Borrow ETH on Synonym (safest if you borrow against wstETH), use that ETH to mint Redacted’s pxETH (the highest yielding LST?) and then use that in pools like Maverick, Balancer, or Curve to earn even more yield

This strategy combines 3 sources of yield:

• Staking wstETH
• SYNO emissions
• pxETH LP yields

Once Synonym is live on mainnet, we can also enable lending and borrowing of Redacted assets such as pxETH and Dinero, which will unlock additional strategies.

Arbitrum

As we noted in last week’s post, Arbitrum will serve as our central hub for accounting. In other words, it will store every transaction routed through Synonym on any connected chain in the order in which they’re made.

We decided to put Arbitrum at the center of Synonym for several reasons.

First, New Order DAO has strong ties to Arbitrum. Many of the most influential projects incubated by New Order, including Redacted Cartel, Y2K Finance, Sector Finance, and Smilee Finance, are all live on Arbitrum.

Second, we want to be where our users are. Arbitrum has become the preferred community for many DeFi professionals in the Ethereum ecosystem with over $4 billion in TVL.

Third, Arbitrum offers easy onboarding for web2 developers who otherwise may not build in web3. With Stylus, smart contracts can be written and deployed on Arbitrum in Rust, C, and C++.

Fourth, it’s currently about 80–90% cheaper to transact on Arbitrum than on Ethereum mainnet. Arbitrum offers low-cost transactions while benefiting from mainnet’s security and data storage capabilities.

Infrastructure Providers

Since Synonym is looking to revolutionize cross-chain liquidity, it’s also vital to have strong partnerships with leading cross-chain communication and risk management providers. We’re also positioned very well in this area via our collaborations with Wormhole, Circle, and Gauntlet.

Wormhole

Wormhole is a top-tier interchain messaging platform, enabling message passing which includes many types of token transactions. This means Synonym users will eventually be able to lend, borrow, and more between 29 blockchains, connecting several major ecosystems including Ethereum/EVM, Solana, Aptos, Sui, and Cosmos/IBC-enabled chains.

As bridging solutions become increasingly important, Wormhole has emerged as a leader in the space. One of their largest developments to-date occurred in March 2023, when Uniswap selected Wormhole to facilitate cross-chain governance between Ethereum and BNB Chain. Since then, Uniswap voters have also chosen to implement Wormhole’s cross-chain services on Gnosis and Moonbeam.

Wormhole also made headlines with their recent $225 million raise, valuing the protocol at $2.5 billion. This raise was completed via token sales, which also begs the question: wen token?

Finally, we just announced our $100k grant from Wormhole Foundation. This strengthens our partnership with Wormhole even more, and will be another source of fuel for Synonym’s future growth.

Circle

Known for their USDC Dollar-pegged stablecoin, Circle is the second largest stablecoin provider in the world. Their Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) enables the flow of native USDC across many different blockchains, which eliminates all of the potential issues inherent in wrappers and locked tokens.

Gauntlet

In preparation for mainnet, Synonym has also been working closely with Gauntlet, a leading provider of DeFi risk management services also used by top protocols including Aave, Compound, and Uniswap. Specifically, Gauntlet is providing services regarding the design of our liquidation mechanism and interest rate model to ensure a healthy and orderly flow of capital on Synonym.

Gauntlet is also involved with the design and implementation of future protocol features, including liquidity unification and risk tranching.

Prepare For Mainnet!

Our testnet officially closes tomorrow, bringing us another step closer to mainnet. Our final testnet stats were spectacular, with over 100k transactions made on the platform.

To keep up with all developments regarding mainnet, SYNO, and beyond, make sure to follow us on X as well as join our community on Discord.