Project Overview
Synthetix is a new flavor of decentralized exchange. There are three key differences relative to most other DEXes:
- Traders trade against pooled community collateral and not any specific counterparty
- Traders buy and sell synthetic assets, marked to market by offchain oracles
- Traders have native access to derivatives and investable baskets
The SNX token acts as a foundation and backbone for this model. Before traders can participate, SNX investors stake their tokens to mint liquidity for the network. When traders execute a transaction, they pay a fee to trade against the stakers. A trader's profit adds to the global debt pool and a trader's loss subtracts from it.
The project is still in its early days and is largely untested. However, as of February 2020, roughly 80% of circulating tokens are currently staked to the network, and over $1b of volume has been registered on the exchange.
The project is also highly complex, and hopefully these docs can serve as an entry point for new investors, stakers and traders. Check out the resources page to get started or a specific section to get clarity on a feature.