The End of Target Practice

Non-public onchain perps? It begins with Synthetix.

In Could 2025, the now-infamous dealer James Wynn evaporated almost $100 million over the span of a calendar week following a collection of liquidations on a number of high-leverage Bitcoin longs on Hyperliquid. 

Certain, Wynn was loudly telegraphing his $100M+ leverage positions throughout social media for clout — however even when he hadn’t been — Wynn’s 9-figure positions, liquidation costs, collateral balances, and leverage ranges have been already fully obtainable to anybody on this planet with an web connection. 

It’s up for debate whether or not or not Wynn was the truth is “brutally hunted” by market makers or teams of merchants that pooled collectively capital, however that is fully irrelevant. 

No matter whether or not Wynn advised anybody about these trades, 9-figure onchain leverage positions might have been discovered shortly and simply by any refined actors trying to hunt his stops and push the market in opposition to him. 

Privateness For Onchain Perps

Public onchain positions — particularly for perps — unnecessarily expose merchants to a swathe of predatory dangers that stem from internet hosting an identical engine onchain: broadcasting particular person trades, sizing, PnL, and liquidation factors. 

Following Wynn’s liquidation spree on Hyperliquid, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) got here out with an X put up calling for elevated privateness measures for decentralized exchanges. 

“For perps (or futures), it’s much more essential to not let others know/see your orders. If others can see your liquidation level, they may attempt to push the market to liquidate you. Even should you received a billion {dollars}, others can gang up on you.” — CZ.

It’s stunningly apparent how publicly broadcasted perp information paints an enormous goal on merchants’ backs, however for too lengthy, merchants have been compelled to make a Faustian discount between the privateness and execution of a CEX and the advantages of permissionlessness, composability, and self-custody of a DEX. 

“Public PnLs and liquidation strains flip merchants into bait. That’s not ‘transparency,’ that’s goal follow…” 

This adjustments with Synthetix. 

CEX vs. DEX 

Traditionally, CEXs have been the popular platform for buying and selling perps. There are numerous the explanation why that is the case, however in the end it comes down to 2 main components: 

Quick execution & good UX: centralized servers permit for speedy order matching and execution, which is essential for an HFT system and in the end ends in a a lot stronger person expertise. Privateness: Nobody desires their monetary data and buying and selling efficiency to be publicly obtainable. 

The outsized success of Hyperliquid has confirmed that merchants are keen to forgo monetary privateness to keep away from CEX custody and commerce onchain with nice UX & deep liquidity — however what should you might preserve custody with out killing privateness, AND retain entry to deep onchain liquidity, AND guarantee optimum UX? 

That is the place Synthetix Mainnet is available in. 

Offchain Order Matching: Privateness & Pace 

By early This fall, Synthetix could have launched the primary Ethereum Mainnet settled CLOB perp change. Its hybrid onchain-offchain structure mitigates Ethereum’s block latency and excessive gasoline prices, permitting for a totally non-public HFT system to dwell on Mainnet. 

The principle kicker for buying and selling privateness comes from Synthetix’s choice to match orders offchain, harnessing an ultra-low latency matching engine to course of orders in milliseconds, enabling deep liquidity and aggressive spreads with out the bottlenecks.

This kills two birds with one stone. 

Not solely does offchain matching provide gasless order placement on Ethereum mainnet and summary away settlement prices, but it surely additionally retains all account-level buying and selling information fully non-public. 

By as soon as once more constructing the primary perp market on Ethereum, we’re laser-focused on creating a high-performance, non-custodial perpetual futures platform on probably the most credibly impartial, battle-tested blockchain with the deepest attainable liquidity.

And that is only the start… 

Developed from years of expertise working perpetual futures, the brand new Synthetix Mainnet structure allows Synthetix to implement a novel set of trade-offs optimized for an L1 perpetual futures change:

Offchain Order Matching: ultra-low-latency matching engine processes orders offchain in milliseconds, retaining dealer privateness whereas sustaining deep liquidity and aggressive spreads.Actual Ethereum L1 Asset safety: Absolutely onchain custody, deposits, and withdrawals. No Bridging. No rehypothecation.Composability: Suitable with all Mainnet belongings and DeFi apps, which have the deepest liquidity and probably the most TVL by far.Group market-making and liquidation vault: No insiders. No back-room offers.Institutional-grade Centralised Restrict Order E book (CLOB): CEX stage throughput and latency.Multi-collateral and cross-margin with subaccount help: Publish a portfolio of belongings as margin, together with yield-bearing collateral, holding these belongings productive whereas buying and selling. 

We’ve made very deliberate trade-offs in our designs and structure that may provide a novel and market-leading buying and selling expertise. 

We’ve mixed the permissionless and non-custodial advantages of constructing on a blockchain, with high-performance necessities and dealer privateness that an offchain matching engine permits us to supply.

However this isn’t nearly beating different DEXs and providing groundbreaking options that our opponents can’t. That is about seeing by means of the ultimate imaginative and prescient of Ethereum.

With Synthtix, the biggest, most refined monetary ecosystem in crypto is about to change into full.

Comply with Synthetix as we speedrun to mainnet:

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