Synthetix’s sUSD, the overcollateralized stablecoin backed by SNX, has slipped dramatically off its peg. Community trust is unraveling just as fast. With a seething Discord community and leadership seemingly left without options, what began as a technical transition is now a reputational crisis.

In other news…are you coming to Permissionless IV Brooklyn in June? Tickets are $399 (for now!) but you can get one for half price with a unique 50% off discount code if you successfully refer 10 new subscribers to the 0xResearch newsletter. Scroll down for details.

Ronin developer activity:

Despite the consensus that “blockchain gaming is dead,” Ronin is not. Nearly two months ago, the gaming L1 became permissionless, allowing the deployment of smart contracts by any developer. Games previously had to be whitelisted by Sky Mavis.

Since then, daily contract deployments have soared — as seen in the green bars above (permissionless contracts) vs. red (permissioned contracts).

That has not yet, however, necessarily translated into increased gaming activity on Ronin. Daily active addresses have remained at around the same levels since Ronin became permissionless, as seen in the below chart. Give it time, though, as there are still believers that play-to-earn will return again.

— Donovan Choy

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We’re bringing together devs, founders, and teams who are:

• Scaling infra that actually runs

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The stablecoin casino

What happens when a stablecoin isn’t stable, and the founder’s response is “no crying in the stablecoin casino”?

The vibes in the Synthetix and Infinex Discords are down bad. So is sUSD, the Synthetix-native stablecoin, which dropped below $1 in March, but today has slipped dramatically below $0.90 — hitting a low (so far) of about $0.835.

While founder Kain Warwick insists this is temporary and the overcollateralized stablecoin is fundamentally safe, the community’s patience is wearing thin. So is its trust.

The root of the problem? The 420 pool, an upgrade that made sUSD more capital-efficient by letting a pooled SNX staking system mint sUSD at a lower 200% collateralization ratio. In the process, it also forgave $60m in staker debt over 12 months — removing the reflexive peg defense that previously incentivized stakers to buy discounted sUSD to repay debt. That incentive is now gone. And so is the peg.

While the protocol hasn’t sold sUSD, according to Warwick, the new issuance mechanics have flooded liquidity pools, skewing Curve’s sUSD stableswap pools 90%+ toward sUSD. Users trying to exit are getting crushed. One posted a screenshot showing a USDC/sUSD LP with literally 0% USDC remaining.

There are about 51 million sUSD in circulation between Ethereum mainnet and Optimism, according to CoinGecko.

Infinex, the frontend product meant to onboard normies, hasn’t helped. It launched an incentive campaign to hold sUSD in the Infinex wallet not long before the depeg, which has been renewed twice. Now Infinex wants people to stack SNX to farm even more rewards. This has users fuming.

“You guys promote sUSD through campaigns, you take responsibility,” wrote one user on the Infinex Discord.

“Liquidate the collateral and get out of the damn stablecoin business,” wrote another on the Synthetix Discord.

Kain’s replies? A mix of sarcasm and stoicism.

Fair or not, it’s a tough look as users are down 13% on what was marketed as a stable asset.

So…what now?

If you bought sUSD for yield expecting stability, you’re in damage-control mode.

Short-term: The peg won’t snap back quickly. No active treasury buybacks, no peg-stabilizing module yet.

1. Exit now if you need capital or can’t stomach further drawdown, or

2. Hold and wait if you believe the peg will recover to $0.95+ via incentives, integrations or treasury action.

Or, maybe you’re considering buying now, fancying yourself a distressed asset investor.

This is obviously a speculative trade, not a passive stablecoin yield play. A bet on recovery assumes:

• SNX price holds or rebounds (key to overcollateralization premise).

• The team executes on liquidity and incentives.

• The peg restoration becomes a top short-term priority.

A slow grind back to $0.99 is plausible — but so is more chop around $0.85–$0.90 if treasury action lags.

While sUSD isn’t Terra, it’s showing some of the same reflexive fragility. Overcollateralization only helps if the market believes it. Right now, confidence is depegged about as much as price is, and until that’s restored, the status quo will remain.

The “s” in sUSD may really stand for “Synthetix,” but this week, it sure feels more like it stands for “suspect” or “suffering.”

— Macauley Peterson

Raydium vs. pump.fun:

How is Solana doing?

Carlos Gonzalez: Network REV in March was $71m, which is down ~87% from January. Most of Solana's REV comes from trading applications when users are competing for the best execution price. However, Solana’s app revenue has been more resilient than network REV. App revenue divided by network REV in March was at an all time-high, which suggests that Solana apps are achieving product-market fit even in declining market conditions.

Marc Arjoon: The app revenue to REV figure shows there is still probably money to be made in the apps, perhaps higher beta plays fundamentally and price-wise. Jupiter in the last 24 hours made more fees than Solana, Ethereum, Tron and pump.fun combined. So despite falling REV, this shows that some apps can still be defensive and gain market share in a declining market.

On pump.fun’s strategy:

Jacob Sharples: I'm surprised pump didn't go into the trading platform side of things sooner, given that there's much more fees to be captured on that side. Based on Blockworks' dashboard, Telegram trading platform bots are capturing close to the amount of fees on pump.fun trades than pump.fun themselves.