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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Derivative exchanges

Synthetix

# Synthetix Notional trading volume Methodology

## 1. Overview

Synthetix notional trading volume measures the total USD value of trading activity across Synthetix's synthetic asset ecosystem. This metric combines spot trading of synthetic assets (synths) with perpetual futures trading to provide a comprehensive view of trading activity on the protocol. The calculation aggregates trading volumes from both Ethereum and Optimism networks, covering Synthetix v1 and v2 implementations.

## 2. Data sources

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

- **Synthetix exchange events**: Parsed `SNX_SynthExchange_event` and `SNX_AtomicSynthExchange_event` logs from Ethereum and Optimism that indicate legitimate synthetic asset trading activity
- **Token transfer events**: Ethereum and Optimism `Transfer` events representing the movement of synthetic tokens during trading
- **Perpetual trading events**: Synthetix `PositionModified` events from v1 (`FuturesMarket_PositionModified_event`) and v2 (`ProxyPerpsV2_PositionModified_event`, `ProxyPerpsV22_PositionModified_event`) perpetual markets on Optimism
- **Market creation events**: Synthetix `FuturesMarketManager_MarketAdded_event` logs that define valid perpetual markets
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: External price data for USD conversion of synthetic asset values
- **Token metadata**: Information about token decimals and addresses for proper value calculation

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Spot trading volume extraction
- **Purpose**: Identifies and measures synthetic asset spot trading volume from token transfer events
- **Logic**: Filters token transfer events on Ethereum and Optimism to identify transfers to the null address (`0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000`) that occur within transactions containing Synthetix exchange events. These transfers represent the burning of synthetic assets during trading. Excludes the iETH token (`0xa9859874e1743a32409f75bb11549892138bba1e`) and validates transactions against allowlisted Synthetix exchange events (`SNX_SynthExchange_event` and `SNX_AtomicSynthExchange_event`) on both Ethereum and Optimism
- **Key fields**: Extracts `value` field from token transfers as raw trading amounts, along with `token_address`, `block_timestamp`, and `transaction_hash` for identification and validation

### Component B: Perpetual trading volume calculation  
- **Purpose**: Calculates notional trading volume from Synthetix perpetual futures position modifications
- **Logic**: Processes position modification events from Synthetix v1 and v2 perpetual markets on Optimism. Calculates trading volume by multiplying the absolute value of `tradeSize` by `lastPrice`, with both values adjusted from 18-decimal fixed-point representation. Filters out markets that appear in the denylist and validates market addresses against market creation events. All perpetual volumes are denominated in sUSD token
- **Key fields**: Uses `tradeSize` and `lastPrice` fields to calculate volume as `abs(tradeSize * lastPrice) / 10^36`, along with market `address` for validation

### Component C: Volume aggregation and standardization
- **Purpose**: Combines spot and perpetual volumes into a unified dataset with consistent schema
- **Logic**: Unions spot and perpetual trading data using consistent dimension mapping including chain identifier, market sector (derivatives), business segment (perpetual), and token addresses. Truncates all timestamps to daily boundaries and applies decimal corrections to normalize token amounts based on token metadata
- **Key fields**: Standardizes `amount` field containing trading volumes, `timestamp` truncated to day level, and dimensional attributes like `chain`, `market_sector_id`, and `token_address`

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Spot and perpetual volumes are combined through union operation, creating a single dataset of all Synthetix trading activity across both trading types and blockchain networks
- **Currency conversion**: All trading volumes are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds matched by token address and date, with proper decimal adjustment based on token metadata  
- **Time aggregation**: Trading volumes are aggregated to daily boundaries by truncating block timestamps to day level
- **Final calculation**: The final metric represents the sum of all USD-denominated trading activity (both spot synthetic asset trades and perpetual futures position modifications) for each day, with zero-filling applied for days with no trading activity and chain availability filtering to ensure data quality

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

Total USD value of derivative contracts executed on the protocol.

SynthetixSNX

Notional trading volume

Notional trading volume

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown