A few days ago, Synthetix announced the launch of perpetual futures.
Perpetual futures on Synthetix
These are fully decentralized and modular perpetual futures with up to 10x leverage, and an easy-to-use user interface thanks to Kwenta.
Exchanges will be launched on Optimism later this week.
Kwenta is a decentralized modular protocol and the first partner to integrate Synthetix perpetual futures with a dedicated user interface. In fact, Synth’s current exchange design does not provide traders with easy access to leveraged trading, or shorting functions.
Synthetix perpetual futures will allow traders to open both long and short leveraged positions on a wide selection of assets. They will also provide an additional revenue stream for SNX’s stakers through exchange rate and financing fees.
BTC, ETH and LINK futures
The goal is to end up offering a wider range of perpetual futures trading pairs on Synthetix than its competitors, as support for new assets can be expanded more easily for futures than for spot assets.
Initially, futures on BTC, ETH and LINK will be available, with limits for the first weeks of 20 million sUSD for BTC and ETH and 2 million for LINK open interest. These limits serve to optimize the parameters of the futures market under real conditions, and will then be removed.
In fact, the current design of this new market is experimental, and may even be changed in later versions.
What is new about Synthetix futures
Futures are usually traded on centralized platforms that have various limitations and require KYC. On decentralized platforms, however, there are essentially no real limitations, other than technological, and identity verification is not necessarily required.
Futures, unlike spot markets, also allow short positions to be opened, which is why they are often preferred by professional traders.
Optimism is one of the main second layers on Ethereum, and allows for very fast and cheap transactions compared to those recorded on the layer 1 blockchain. In this way, both the decentralization and security of Ethereum can be maintained, without necessarily having to use slow and expensive transactions.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2022/03/17/synthetix-decentralized-perpetual-futures-on-optimism/