Synthetix Launches Perpetuals On Base

Synthetix, an ecosystem of derivatives protocols, has launched a perpetuals exchange on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 network built by Coinbase.

Perps V3 comes with a number of improvements over its predecessor. Traders can now use USDC, which at a $25.7B market capitalization is crypto’s second largest stablecoin, as collateral. Previously, users could only use sUSD, Synthetix’s stablecoin.

“Experimenting with popular assets like USDC massively increases the capacity of Synthetix to attract new collateral and launch new derivative markets,” Synthetix’s pseudonymous contributor Cavalier said in a prepared statement.

The project’s SNX token is down 20% in the past month.

With the launch, Base developers will have new tools at their disposal to build out a DeFi ecosystem, with projects like Polynomial, Kwenta, and DHEDGE, all of which use Synthetix under the hood, committing to launch on Base, according to a post from the team.

Infinex, a perpetuals exchange built on Synthetix which became public last July, will also launch on Base, according to a release shared with The Defiant.

Synthetix specializes in crypto derivatives and synthetic assets and was a fundamental driver of the initial surge of activity in open finance known as “DeFi Summer.” Having partnered with Optimism in 2020, the project has often been early to deploy its offerings on new Layer 2s. Base will be the project’s second Layer 2 deployment after Optimism.

Base launched its mainnet in August and has quickly attracted $699M of capital after drawing attention during the short-lived frenzy surrounding friend.tech, the token-gated social application.