SynFutures, a Singapore-based decentralized exchange (DEX) focused on perpetual futures, just raised an impressive $22 million in its latest funding round.
The financing round, which brings SynFutures’ total funding to $38 million, was led by Pantera Capital and also included participation from SIG DT Investments, a subsidiary of Susquehanna International Group (SIG DTI), and HashKey Capital.
Perpetual futures are a type of financial derivative widely used in cryptocurrency and commodity trading. Unlike traditional futures contracts with a specific expiration date, perpetual futures have no fixed expiration date, run indefinitely, and can be traded with leverage, allowing traders to control a larger position than their starting capital would allow.
The fundraising announcement accompanies the unveiling of SynFutures’ V3 of its platform, with the mainnet release scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2023.
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The upgraded V3 platform includes an Oyster automated market maker (Oyster AMM), which is deployed completely on-chain.
According to SynFutures, an Oyster AMM combines the features of order book and AMM models into a single approach, improving liquidity and capital efficiency in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Perhaps the largest and best known AMM on the market Uniswap. Order book models are essentially how centralized exchanges match buy and sell orders.
It enables permissionless listing of all trading pairs, including major crypto assets such as Bitcoin (BTC), stablecoins and major altcoins, NFTs, as well as indices. The protocol is built on Polygon – a blockchain network that allows fast and cheap transactions – and also ensures the presence of double-sided liquidity, allowing users to provide liquidity with just one token of a trading pair.
“Crypto’s readiness to meet the challenges of mainstream adoption depends on DeFi’s ability to reinvigorate and strengthen its derivatives ecosystem,” Rachel Lin, co-founder and CEO of SynFutures, told me. Declutter. “V3 of SynFutures is designed to ensure that DeFi does not languish behind its competitors in CeFi and TradFi, and to ensure that DeFi can reach its full potential, opening the door for mainstream and institutional adoption.
Derivatives trading and DeFi
Discussing the role of derivatives trading, the CEO of SynFutures said that while it is a driver of substantial trading volumes in both TradFi and CeFi, which often outweigh spot trading, the existing derivatives infrastructure within DeFi would struggle to match to keep pace with the advent of institutional trading. outfits.
“Although there is a rising demand for DeFi after the CEX debacles last year, DeFi has yet to bridge the yawning gap that separates it from institutional players that rely mainly on derivatives in their financial strategies,” Lin told us. Declutter.
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Lin expects the bull market – driven by geopolitical and macroeconomic factors and the Bitcoin halving – to occur next year, but “institutions will nevertheless still not be able to fully embrace DeFi due to this limited derivatives functionality.”
“If the crypto markets were to experience a boom, DeFi’s currently inadequate capital and liquidity efficiency would continue to hinder its ambitions,” she said.
To that end, SynFutures hopes that the V3 of its platform will ultimately “prove to be a tipping point” for the niche.
Edited by Liam Kelly.