Overcollateralized borrowers deposit funds into Synthetix and mint synthetic assets.

Synthetix is a non-custodial derivatives exchange protocol built on Ethereum. Synthetix was founded by Kain Warwick and launched in 2017.

SNX tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take all of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue). Synthetix's investors include Paradigm, Framework Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, etc.

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Synthetix

# Synthetix Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average fees per user (AFPU) measures the average amount of fees generated per daily active user on the Synthetix protocol. This metric answers the question "How much revenue does each user generate on average per day?" The calculation divides total daily fees by the number of unique daily active users, providing insight into user monetization efficiency across Synthetix's synthetic asset trading and perpetual futures platforms.

## 2. Data sources

The AFPU calculation relies on several types of blockchain and external data:

- **Synthetix contract events**: Parsed events from Synthetix V1 and V2 smart contracts on Ethereum and Optimism, including `SynthExchange`, `AtomicSynthExchange`, and `PositionModified` events that indicate user trading activity
- **Token transfer events**: Ethereum and Optimism `Transfer` events specifically filtered for sUSD transfers to the Synthetix fee collector address
- **Market configuration data**: `MarketAdded` events from the FuturesMarketManager contract used to create exclusion lists for proper user classification
- **End-of-day price feeds**: External token price data for USD conversion of sUSD fee amounts
- **Token metadata**: Contract information including decimal precision for proper amount calculations

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: User identification and classification
- **Purpose**: Identify and classify all unique daily active users across Synthetix protocols
- **Logic**: The system parses multiple types of Synthetix contract events to capture user interactions. For Ethereum, it tracks `SynthExchange` and `AtomicSynthExchange` events to identify spot traders. For Optimism, it captures both spot trading through `SynthExchange` events and perpetual futures trading through `PositionModified` events from V1 contracts. For V2 perpetual futures, it monitors `PositionModified` events from `ProxyPerpsV2` and `ProxyPerpsV21` contracts while applying a denylist to exclude V1 markets and prevent double-counting. Each user interaction is timestamped and classified by chain, user type (spot trader vs perpetual futures trader), and protocol version.
- **Key fields**: `user_address` (unique user identifier), `block_timestamp` (interaction timing), `chain` (ethereum/optimism), `user_type` (trader classification), `transaction_hash` (deduplication key)

### Component B: Daily active user aggregation  
- **Purpose**: Calculate distinct daily active users across multiple dimensions using efficient probabilistic counting
- **Logic**: User interactions are bucketed by day and aggregated using HyperLogLog algorithms for memory-efficient distinct counting. The system creates multiple breakdowns: total users across all chains and protocols, users by chain (Ethereum vs Optimism), users by type (spot vs perpetual traders), and users by product. HyperLogLog enables accurate distinct user counts even when the same user appears in multiple transactions on the same day. Missing days are filled with zeros to ensure continuous time series data.
- **Key fields**: `user_dau` (distinct user count), `timestamp` (daily bucket), `dimensions` (aggregation level), `chain_id`, `user_type`

### Component C: Fee collection tracking
- **Purpose**: Identify and quantify all fees collected by the Synthetix protocol
- **Logic**: The system monitors token transfers where sUSD tokens are sent to the designated fee collector address `0xfeefeefeefeefeefeefeefeefeefeefeefeefeef`. This captures exchange fees from synthetic asset trades and perpetual futures positions. The tracking covers both Ethereum (sUSD contract `0x57ab1ec28d129707052df4df418d58a2d46d5f51`) and Optimism (sUSD contract `0x8c6f28f2f1a3c87f0f938b96d27520d9751ec8d9`) to capture cross-chain fee collection. Each fee event is timestamped and includes the raw token amount transferred.
- **Key fields**: `amount` (raw sUSD fee amount), `token_address` (sUSD contract), `block_timestamp` (fee collection time), `chain` (originating blockchain)

### Component D: Fee processing and conversion
- **Purpose**: Convert raw sUSD fee amounts to standardized USD values for consistent reporting
- **Logic**: Raw sUSD amounts are processed through decimal correction to account for token precision (18 decimals for sUSD), then converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds. The system aggregates fees daily by summing all fee collection events within each 24-hour period. Days with no fee activity are filled with zero values to maintain continuous time series data. Chain-level fees are consolidated to provide protocol-wide totals.
- **Key fields**: `fees` (USD-denominated fee amount), `timestamp` (daily aggregation period), `chain_id` (fee origin)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Daily active users and daily fees are joined by timestamp to create matched pairs for each day. The system ensures both metrics use consistent daily boundaries and handles cases where one metric may have data while the other doesn't
- **Currency conversion**: All sUSD fee amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day pricing data, with proper decimal adjustment to account for token precision
- **Time aggregation**: Both user counts and fee amounts use daily time buckets (midnight to midnight UTC) for consistent temporal alignment
- **Final calculation**: AFPU is calculated by dividing the total daily fees (in USD) by the total daily active users. The division handles edge cases where user count is zero by returning null or zero values. The result represents the average fee generated per user on each given day, providing insight into user monetization trends and protocol efficiency

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

SynthetixSNX

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

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