Derive X Synthetix, a thread.
Those of you who have been following me for a while know that @derivexyz is one of my favourite projects, and definitely in my top three favourite portfolio companies (though not by PnL 😬).
Apr 1 • 29 tweets • 4 min read
I have a weekly call with @hjmomtazi to discuss the market. We spent almost the entire call this week debating whether ETH is doomed.
While I used to be an ETH maxi, I pivoted to chain agnosticism due to contractual obligations (@infinex_app). I'm still deeply wedded to my ETH bags though and think of them often.
Mar 26 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
Let’s have a little chat about market makers. 🥶👇
I’ve had the misfortune of dealing with a lot of bad market makers over the years. But also a few good ones.
This feels like ICOs again. What is absolutely clear from every conversation rn is that something needs to change. I’m a fan of markets and I think we can shift the incentives, people are now realising there are negative reputational externalities.
Memecoins are great, they exploded this cycle as a response to the VC fuckerly of last cycle, low float high FDV games. But low barriers to entry mean you are going to get scams. This is ICOs all over again.
Jan 19 • 26 tweets • 5 min read
My unvarnished experience trading $TRUMP yesterday. Possibly the best opportunity we will see this decade but it was not an easy trade. 🧵
I was playing basketball with my kids Saturday afternoon (lucky Timezone overlap). I finally tired them out and picked up TG and opened the big brain collective echo chat.
Dec 4, 2024 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
The story of the STONKS CTO.
Ten days ago a member of the Big Brain Collective Echo telegram chat discovered the first memecoin on Solana, $STNK
Oct 1, 2024 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
A much needed shakeup in coming to @synthetix_io. A thread on how we got here and what comes next. 👇
The Synthetix project has many firsts to its name. The first yield farm, the first EIP style governance for DeFi. The first governance council. The first DeFi architecture to leverage proxies. The first to deploy to OP. Yet its relevance has declined over the years.
Sep 3, 2024 • 17 tweets • 2 min read
A thread for those not on the list to help you cope.
doesn’t count as revenue because you basically have a cabal going around robbing small children of their lunch money at gunpoint.pump.fun
Jul 3, 2024 • 38 tweets • 6 min read
Breaking the meta is challenging, but there is nothing that excites a degen more than a new mechanism to try to game. This is why yield farming was so effective in creating DeFi summer. Pool 1, pool 2, pool 8?... shut up and take my money.
This is why the points meta created so much excitement, and for the projects that got in early it was extremely effective at driving awareness and attention. Unfortunately as we have recently realised it was not sustainable.
May 4, 2024 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Man @LayerZero_Labs you’re really gonna make me write up another thread huh…
I had a call last night with one of my favourite projects, they are working on their governance framework. The word I kept coming back to was LEGITIMACY.
May 3, 2024 • 26 tweets • 5 min read
It’s been a while since I’ve put my theadoooooor hat on, so let’s have a little chat about capital formation incentives in crypto.
Yes there are many bad actors, but not everyone is a bad actor, never attribute to malice what can more easily be explained by misaligned incentives.
Mar 20, 2024 • 23 tweets • 6 min read
This has gotten way out of hand 😂. is the new site for @KengLernitas. A 🧵 on what has happened so far.kenglernitas.wtf
I started playing around with memecoins a few weeks ago, bridged some USDC to Solana and started yoloing on @dexscreener. This was right around the launch of @bodensol. Despite what a lot of overly serious people are saying I find many of these memecoins to be utterly hilarious.
Jan 1, 2024 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Interesting start to the new year in @synthetix_io land. SNX stakers incurred ~$2m in losses during the TRB incident today. Not amazing but not world ending either, here are my thoughts.
What happened? TRB had a 250k USD open interest cap that ballooned to 12.5m as the price ran up the last few months. This should have been adjusted back down, but risk controls were lax, there was diffusion of responsibility. The Spartan Council is responsible for params though.
Dec 30, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Ok so looking at the responses here I have to conclude a couple things, I’m not very closely followed by the core solana community 😂, and it seems like solana is going through a similar phenomenon as 2017 era Ethereum. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Most of the activity is purely speculative the same way ICOs were, but despite the majority of ICOs going to zero, we got dozens of foundational projects funded that are still relevant in the ETH ecosystem. I’m hoping that something similar is playing out and it’s still early.
Dec 7, 2023 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
What is your threshold for considering a service custodial? Binance & Coinbase? Obviously custodial. Memorising the seed words to a cold wallet? Obviously non-custodial. Is there a continuum in between these two extremes or is there a criterion that makes custody binary?
The meme, “not your keys not your coins” has been around a long time, but what explicitly does it mean? If you don’t control your keys, then your crypto is not really yours. Ok so what does it mean to control your keys?
Dec 5, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
We are finally seeing some green shoots out there after a long winter. Here are the projects I am watching closely, in no particular order (probably pyops).
$LYRA - This project has such Synthetix early 2019 vibes it is honestly hard to watch sometimes. V2 is coming soon.
$OP - The Superchain is a narrative that will dominate 2024. The tech is legit and only getting better, we are going to see so many new app chains deploy next year…
Jun 20, 2023 • 34 tweets • 5 min read
Can Synthetix death Spiral?
The short answer, yes it can. The longer answer, yes “if”. Let’s unpack the IF here.
How does Synthetix even work?
You lock SNX and borrow sUSD, the current collateral ratio is 500%, so you can only borrow 20% of the value of your SNX in sUSD. (An aside, this is overly conservative imo, but I don’t make the rules…)
Jul 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So here is a fun fact, I woke up this morning and realised as of a few weeks ago I’m the largest SNX holder, even factoring in the treasury council. Yet still the rest of the Spartan Council ignores my advice 🤷♂️.
And for the reply guys out there ready to say “SNX bad price, too many houses”. Let me explain the trade for you. SNX price ⬆️ = mint sUSD, sell sUSD for ETH at local bottom of the cycle. ETH ⬆️ ~40x, hedge some ETH into houses through the bull market.
Jun 8, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Loving the reply guys in this thread saying omg how could you do this? I’ll tell you exactly how, you do several thousand things with correct assumptions and then one with an incorrect assumption. Seeing the funds in your address is NOT sufficient as a test.
I can think of at least 50 different times something like this has happened within the Synthetix community. The correct way to test a tx is to ensure you can move the received tokens, but like 0% of people do this.
May 30, 2022 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
This year I’ve focussed significant attention on governance as a @synthetixio council member and more broadly facilitating within the ecosystem. An important part of this work has been helping projects launch protocols on @optimismPBC through a mentorship program.
It’s been awesome to watch the first cohort develop their roadmaps and decide Optimism is the best place to build. Now @Laurashin and @jinglejamOP will help me select the next cohort which will be focussed on women founders only. If this interests you here are some highlights.
