• Blockchain
• Cryptocurrency
• Fintech

The challenge

Synthetix wanted to create a cryptocurrency-based platform where multiple stable coins - each pegged to a global currency - could be traded with each other quickly without having to use an exchange to convert between currencies.

A key challenge in this space is that the underlying technology is set up to prevent code changes (smart contracts are unchangeable once deployed). Any code that is deployed is completely out in the open and can be attacked at any time, and there’s no kill switch you can pull to stop it unless you build one in, which is itself potentially exploitable. In addition, all the tooling is still maturing (and often requires in-depth knowledge to produce value with it). A single wrong step in migration can be catastrophic.

The solution

Working closely with Synthetix, as well as blockchain experts Coinage, the Exogee team evolved the decentralised Ethereum based single currency stablecoin platform into a synthetic asset platform with support for a large number of tracked assets.

Before doing any work, we ensured that we understood the existing mathematical model. We then worked to create a new model that would support multiple currencies, and crucially allow people who hold a particular asset to swap it for another without having to hold the underlying value token (SNX). The technical challenges in this are vast, as many traditional programming paradigms (such as large loops) just don’t work in Solidity due to the way computation is paid for on the network.

Once we settled on a model that worked in theory, we first modelled it in Excel to see if it stood up to scrutiny. It took approximately 4 different models until we were confident that what we had would work in all cases including extreme edge cases from users attempting to exploit the model.

At this point the team expressed a concern about an existing technical component of their architecture called an oracle. The legacy oracle was constantly losing its ability to send price updates to the blockchain, and the existing monitoring tools also sometimes failed to detect this scenario. The existing workaround to reboot the oracle server every 15 minutes was far from ideal. Their team had been working on the existing oracle for approximately 6 months at this stage. We built a more robust version using AWS standard tooling (Lambda and CloudWatch) in 2 weeks. It has functional monitoring that plots metrics over time and can also notify the team via Slack, email, and SMS, escalating to various support tiers as problems remain unresolved.

The value

The solution we built consisted of 32 interconnected smart contracts, making Synthetix one of the most complicated smart contract networks in the defi space as a whole. A security audit on the entire network of contracts found no vulnerabilities at all. We deployed the contracts and successfully handed the work over to the internal team to maintain and improve. Since then, Synthetix has gone from strength to strength.

At the time of writing, there’s currently in excess of $600 million of value protected by the Ethereum smart contracts we created.