Synapse Protocol Bi-Weekly STIP Backfund Updates

Synapse Bi-Weekly update:
[last updated 2/13]

Status of Distributions:

Claimed: 857,145
Distributed: 195,999

Stats:

  • $653.6mm in bridge volume ($36m/day)
  • $250k in transaction fees

  • 15k unique addresses

  • Slippage free bridging on ETH and USDC transfers to/from Arbitrum LIVE

Summary of Incentives:

The Synapse STIP distributions started officially on Jan 26th.

Distribution began with bridge rebates on all routes to Arbitrum, select routes back to mainnet, and the launch of RFQ (Fast-bridging). In that time period, 196,000 ARB has been distributed to over 8k addresses, incentivizing upwards of $650m of bridge volume.

Highlights:

RFQ Launch

Synapse RFQ bridging launched on Arbitrum on 1/13/2024 and over the past couple weeks has generated ~$5m in slippage-free bridging. Bridging through RFQ at any size costs 4bps on amounts up to $1m, and incurs no slippage typical of liquidity based bridging. Upon bridging $100,000 USDC to Arbitrum, a user would only pay $40 in fees.

RFQ bridging speeds are best in industry, with a median bridge time of ~13 seconds on Arbitrum. This is a 100x improvement from existing bridge times, where bridging stables through CCTP takes ~20 minutes. As more relayers onboard and run differentiated strategies, bridge times and costs will continue to decrease.

Driving volume to the Arbitrum Ecosystem:

In aggregate, bridge incentives have driven > $650m in bridge volume and thousands of transactions in its first week of distributions. The program is also driving adoption of RFQ versus other forms of bridging, as RFQ transactions made up nearly 10% of all transactions to/from Arbitrum in its first week.

Additionally, support for ETH on Synapse RFQ launched 1/30/2024, enabling slippage free bridging for native ETH. Additional asset support, more complex relayer strategies, and continuing incentives should all continue to drive dollars into the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Operational:
We plan to claim the next tranche of STIP rewards this week. All rewards are distributed via an airdrop, using the STIP distributor contract. There are no changes to the original distribution plan. The next Bi-Weekly update will be posted on 2/27 to establish a regular cadence.

Contracts that are Incentivized:

SynapseBridge:

SynapseCCTP:

SynapseRFQ:

Learn more:

RFQ Bridging: Synapse World Domination Plan: Step 1 - RFQ Bridging — Synapse Labs

STIP incentives: Synapse Bridge Rebates - Arbitrum — Synapse Labs

STIP Distributor:

Synapse Bi-Weekly update:
[last updated 2/27]

Status of Distributions:

Claimed: ~1,420,000 ARB

Distributed: 280,273 ARB

Stats:

  • $880m in bridge volume ($30m/day)

  • $700k in transaction fees

  • 18k unique addresses

  • Slippage free bridging on ETH and USDC transfers to/from Arbitrum LIVE

Summary of Incentives:

The Synapse STIP distributions started officially on Jan 26th.

Distribution began with bridge rebates on all routes to Arbitrum, select routes back to mainnet, and the launch of RFQ (Fast-bridging). In that time period, 280,000 ARB has been distributed to over 20k addresses, incentivizing upwards of $880m.5m of bridge volume. In the last ~week, 100k ARB has been distributed, incentivizing $240m of bridge volume.

Highlights:

RFQ Launch

Synapse RFQ bridging launched on Arbitrum on 1/13/2024 and over the past couple weeks has generated ~$8m in slippage-free bridging. Bridging through RFQ at any size costs 4bps on amounts up to $1m, and incurs no slippage typical of liquidity based bridging. Upon bridging $100,000 USDC to Arbitrum, a user would only pay $40 in fees.

RFQ bridging speeds are best in industry, with a median bridge time of ~13 seconds on Arbitrum. This is a 100x improvement from existing bridge times, where bridging stables through
CCTP takes ~20 minutes. As more relayers onboard and run differentiated strategies, bridge times and costs will continue to decrease.

Driving volume to the Arbitrum Ecosystem:

In aggregate, bridge incentives have driven > $880m in bridge volume and thousands of transactions in its first week of distributions. The program is also driving adoption of RFQ versus other forms of bridging, as RFQ transactions made up nearly 10% of all transactions to/from Arbitrum in its first week.

Additional asset support, more complex relayer strategies, and continuing incentives should all continue to drive dollars into the Arbitrum ecosystem. Relayers are beginning to explore strategies like rebalancing, which should improve liquidity on supported chains.

Synapse RFQ is offering industry best bridging rates at extremely fast speeds. RFQ is cheaper than CCTP, which has no fees, on many routes.

https://twitter.com/defi_moses/status/1760640525370069025

Operational:
We plan to claim the next tranche of STIP rewards this week. All rewards are distributed via an airdrop, using the STIP distributor contract. There are no changes to the original distribution plan.

Contracts that are Incentivized:

Learn more:

RFQ Bridging: Synapse World Domination Plan: Step 1 - RFQ Bridging — Synapse Labs

STIP incentives: Synapse Bridge Rebates - Arbitrum — Synapse Labs

STIP Distributor:

Synapse Bi-Weekly update:
[last updated 3/12]

Status of Distributions:

Claimed: ~1,650,000 ARB

Distributed: ~560,000 ARB

Stats:

  • $1.685b in bridge volume ($40m/day)

  • $1.3m in transaction fees

  • 33k unique addresses

  • Slippage free bridging on ETH and USDC transfers to/from Arbitrum LIVE

Summary of Incentives:

The Synapse STIP distributions started officially on Jan 26th.

Distribution began with bridge rebates on all routes to Arbitrum, select routes back to mainnet, and the launch of RFQ (Fast-bridging). In that time period, 280,000 ARB has been distributed to over 51k addresses, incentivizing upwards of $1.69b of bridge volume. Since the last bi-weekly update, 300k ARB has been distributed, incentivizing $1.69b of bridge volume

Highlights:

RFQ Launch

Synapse RFQ bridging launched on Arbitrum on 1/13/2024 and over the past couple weeks has generated ~$13m in slippage-free bridging. Bridging through RFQ at any size costs 4bps on amounts up to $1m, and incurs no slippage typical of liquidity based bridging. Upon bridging $100,000 USDC to Arbitrum, a user would only pay $40 in fees.

This past week the Synapse DAO passed a proposal that will drastically increase the liquidity for some of the initial relayers. This proposal should drastically increase the size of transactions that RFQ can offer competitive rates to.


RFQ bridging speeds are best in industry, with a median bridge time of ~13 seconds on Arbitrum. This is a 100x improvement from existing bridge times, where bridging stables through
CCTP takes ~20 minutes. As more relayers onboard and run differentiated strategies, bridge times and costs will continue to decrease.

Driving volume to the Arbitrum Ecosystem:

In aggregate, bridge incentives have driven > $1.6b in bridge volume and thousands of transactions in its first week of distributions. The program is also driving adoption of RFQ versus other forms of bridging, as RFQ transactions accounted for as much as 15% of all transactions to/from Arbitrum in recent weeks.

Additional asset support, more complex relayer strategies, and continuing incentives should all continue to drive dollars into the Arbitrum ecosystem. Recently, some relayers have added strategies that allow for automatic rebalancing, creating a causal increase in the utilization of relayer liquidity. Other relayers are exploring more complex strategies.

Synapse RFQ is offering industry best bridging rates at extremely fast speeds. RFQ is cheaper than CCTP, which has no fees, on many routes.

https://twitter.com/defi_moses/status/1760640525370069025

Operational:
We plan to claim the final tranche of STIP rewards this week. All rewards are distributed via an airdrop, using the STIP distributor contract. There are no changes to the original distribution plan.

Contracts that are Incentivized:

Learn more:

RFQ Bridging: Synapse World Domination Plan: Step 1 - RFQ Bridging — Synapse Labs

STIP incentives: Synapse Bridge Rebates - Arbitrum — Synapse Labs

STIP Distributor:

Synapse Bi-Weekly update:
[last updated 3/26]

This will be the last bi-weekly update

Status of Distributions:

Claimed: ~2,000,000 ARB ( Claims completed)

Distributed: ~1,101,000 ARB

Stats:

  • $3.05b in bridge volume ($51m/day)

  • $1.7m in transaction fees

  • 60k unique addresses

  • Slippage free bridging on ETH and USDC transfers to/from Arbitrum LIVE

Summary of Incentives:

The Synapse STIP distributions started officially on Jan 26th.

Distribution began with bridge rebates on all routes to Arbitrum, select routes back to mainnet, and the launch of RFQ (Fast-bridging). In that time period, 500,000 ARB has been distributed to over 55k addresses, incentivizing upwards of $3.05b of bridge volume. Since the last bi-weekly update, 600k ARB has been distributed, incentivizing $3.05b of bridge volume

This is the last week of incentives for Synapse, as STIP the backfund ends March 29th.

Highlights:

RFQ Launch

Synapse RFQ bridging launched on Arbitrum on 1/13/2024 and over the past couple weeks has generated ~$23m in slippage-free bridging. Bridging through RFQ at any size costs 4bps on amounts up to $1m, and incurs no slippage typical of liquidity based bridging. Upon bridging $100,000 USDC to Arbitrum, a user would only pay $40 in fees.

Three weeks ago the Synapse DAO passed a proposal that will drastically increase the liquidity for some of the initial relayers. Existing Relayers have increased the size that they quote at, and on many chains low-slippage swaps are quotes for up to ~$1m.

RFQ bridging speeds are best in industry, with a median bridge time of ~13 seconds on Arbitrum. This is a 100x improvement from existing bridge times, where bridging stables through
CCTP takes ~20 minutes. As more relayers onboard and run differentiated strategies, bridge times and costs will continue to decrease.

Driving volume to the Arbitrum Ecosystem:

In aggregate, bridge incentives have driven > $3.05b in bridge volume and thousands of transactions since in its first week of distributions. The program is also driving adoption of RFQ versus other forms of bridging, as RFQ transactions accounted for as much as 15% of all transactions to/from Arbitrum in recent weeks. Over time more volume gets routed through RFQ.

Additional asset support, more complex relayer strategies, and continuing incentives should all continue to drive dollars into the Arbitrum ecosystem. Recently, some relayers have added strategies that allow for automatic rebalancing, creating a causal increase in the utilization of relayer liquidity. Other relayers are exploring more complex strategies.

Synapse RFQ is offering industry best bridging rates at extremely fast speeds. RFQ is cheaper than CCTP, which has no fees, on many routes.

https://twitter.com/defi_moses/status/1760640525370069025

Operational:
The final tranche of ARB rewards has been claimed. In the last week of the program, the rest of rewards will be distributed according to the original proposal.

Contracts that are Incentivized:

Learn more:

RFQ Bridging: Synapse World Domination Plan: Step 1 - RFQ Bridging — Synapse Labs

STIP incentives: Synapse Bridge Rebates - Arbitrum — Synapse Labs

STIP Distributor: