A QUICK OVERVIEW OF SYNTHETIX

Synthetix is a central part of DeFi and the Ethereum blockchain because it enables access to real life assets like forex and precious metals. In the future, it will also give access to equities (such as stocks like Tesla, Apple) and commodities. Globally, many lack access to these investment vehicles. Synthetix is a pioneer in this space. They don’t actually deal in the physical assets, but in collateralized ‘synthetic’ placeholders. The tool by which people offer their commodities into the ecosystem is Mintr. The recent rush of ‘food tokens’ have all used the synthetix code on the back end.

Within Mintr, you can stake collateral and SNX and then claim SNX rewards weekly. However, the problem in recent weeks is that the rewards for staking are in many cases vastly smaller than the exorbitant Ethereum Gas fees required to claim them.

HOW THE L2 TESTNET SOLVES THE PROBLEM

Understanding this issue, Synthetic today announced their Optimistic Ethereum L2 testnet. This is significant not only for SNX but for DeFi in general, as Synthetix is the first to integrate a Layer 2 solution into their protocol. This is a great way to get more people involved with the reduced fees and to drive innovation as deploying smart contracts on the L1 Ethereum mainnet is expensive.

HOW TO USE THE L2 TESTNET

Now that we understand the problem and the need for the L2 solution, now I’m going to show you how to use it. If you’re using a wallet that’s eligible for the L2 testnet, you’ll have a banner on the top of your browser window.

Clicking that will take you to the L2 testnet dashboard. This dashboard looks very similar to the original Mintr one, except for the L2 icon in the corner.

In our initial test, we were able to stake SNX for 153 sUSD and the cost was 0 GWEI, a completely free transaction. This is a much-needed improvement and should fuel another whole wave of DeFi innovation!

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