Original Author: Eric, Foresight News
The "DeFi veteran" Synthetix, which returned from OP Mainnet to the Ethereum mainnet, started a contract trading competition exactly one month ago today. This DeFi protocol, which launched on Ethereum back in 2018, has gone through a long journey and ultimately returned to the embrace of the mainnet, also choosing to explore the order book perp DEX after venturing into stablecoins and synthetic assets.
However, as Synthetix itself stated, they do have considerable experience with perp DEX, having operated on OP Mainnet for two to three years. But as they mentioned, those years were indeed wasted, and this return to the Ethereum mainnet can be seen as a kind of fresh start.
But none of this is the main point; the focus is on commemorating this new beginning and promoting their new platform. Synthetix organized a contract trading competition, which ran from October 20 to November 20 local time, and according to Beijing time, it has just concluded.
From the results, the outcome was dismal. I don't know if the promotional effect was achieved, but in terms of discouraging contract trading, this competition had significant educational value…
Doing Nothing, Earning 100,000 for Free
How dismal was the result? According to the leaderboard provided by Synthetix, out of 98 participants in this competition, only 12 did not incur losses, and among those, two did not make any trades at all. Sixty-eight people suffered losses exceeding 90%, and 27 went to zero.
Let’s briefly discuss the basic rules of this competition. Synthetix planned to invite 100 people to participate in the first season, with 50 invited directly. The directly invited participants included well-known trading bloggers on X and executives from well-known companies in the industry, such as James Wynn, who made 100 million in 70 days and then went to zero, Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy, Synthetix founder Kain, and his partner Jordan from Bodhi Ventures. Notable figures from the Chinese community, such as Feng Wuxiang and Chasing Wind Lab, were also directly invited, and even a zoomer who reports important Web3 news joined in.
The remaining 50 spots were filled from sUSD and sUSDe pre-deposit holders and Kwenta point holders, resulting in a total of 98 participants. The prize distribution for this competition was extremely unbalanced, with the first prize being $1 million, while the prizes for second to tenth place were only a maximum of 25,000 SNX (valued at about $15,000 based on the price at the end of the competition) and the Patrons NFT, which grants access to Infinex token airdrops.
Each participant started with a $50,000 USDT margin, and on November 5, each contestant would receive an additional $50,000 USDT margin. Additionally, starting from November 1, Synthetix would allow the community to vote to airdrop $10,000 USDT to a participant with a margin of less than $1,000 USDT. Of course, these USDT could only be used on the platform and could not be withdrawn.
As for trading leverage, there were no restrictions, and the focus was on selected popular markets, including mainstream crypto assets like BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, SUI, and ENA. Under such rule design, most participants had only one goal: to win the championship.
In the early stages, while many participants were cautiously testing the waters, Feng Wuxiang surged ahead, gaining what seemed to be an insurmountable advantage through high-leverage long positions.
But the outcome… after a total of 132 trades worth over $70 million, Feng Wuxiang faced liquidation when Bitcoin dropped below $90,000 a few days ago. It must be said that this is the best example of "you can win the market 100 times, but the market only needs to win you once." Feng Wuxiang himself stated on X that he believed everyone was aiming for the championship in this competition, and it was difficult to achieve high ROI without high leverage, but he also reminded that in real trading, one should choose low leverage and hedge properly.
The champion of this competition was Gmoney, who has nearly 320,000 fans on X. Gmoney's "claim to fame" was purchasing CryptoPunk #8219 for 140 ETH (worth about $176,000 at the time) in January 2021, setting a record for the highest price at that time. This NFT remains his profile picture on X.
In fact, until last night, the leader was still Bodhi Ventures, led by Synthetix insiders, with a lead amount of several hundred thousand dollars. However, the long positions of the "former champion" and Gmoney's short strategy caused a ranking swap in another round of market movement last night, and this timely drop delivered a fatal blow just before the competition ended.
Ultimately, the top ten in the competition were the only 10 who remained above water. Our old friend James nearly made it into the top ten without doing anything. In the market predicting who would win the competition on Polymarket, out of 59 listed participants, 6 made a profit, 2 did not trade, and among the remaining 51, only 1 lost less than 20%, while only 11 lost less than 90%.
The top ten collectively earned $2.184 million from a total principal of $1 million, with the champion alone earning $1.117 million. According to the rules, the total experience funds distributed by Synthetix should be $10 million USDT, but ultimately, the 98 participants played out $4,020,154, resulting in a total loss of nearly $6 million. If this were real money, Synthetix would likely feel quite pained, and if you were sitting in front of the screen as the counterparty to all participants throughout the competition, as long as your funds were sufficient, you could have earned $6 million in a month just by doing nothing—just thinking about it is quite exciting.
Perhaps, as Feng Wuxiang said, the competition for the sole championship made everyone overly eager, and frequent high-leverage operations caused many to lose everything even after supplementing their margin with $50,000 USDT during the competition. Regarding this outcome, I feel that the educational significance of discouraging gambling far outweighs the promotional aspect of the platform. Most of the carefully selected so-called "top" traders ended up with nearly zero results, let alone ordinary people.
When we look back at this competition from a god's perspective, the start time coincided with a point where the market had been continuously declining. Although there was some initial rebound, it almost immediately dropped without looking back. During the competition, Bitcoin experienced a 30% drop from its highest to lowest price, and it’s easy to imagine that the operations of those who went to zero or nearly zero were definitely reckless long positions.
Human greed and obsession are not limited by race, gender, or age. Please remember: what you see in this competition from others is precisely what you see in yourself.
Second Season of the "Discouragement Competition" to Launch Next Month
After the first season ended, the second season of this "discouragement competition" will launch on December 1, expanding the total number of participants to 1,000, consisting of 200 top traders and 800 community members. Directly invited participants will need to share their views on the competition on X as an entry ticket, while community participants will be selected from users who have pre-deposited sUSD amounts, ranked in the top 800 with a minimum deposit of 10,000 sUSD.
Perhaps learning from the wildly imaginative lessons of the first season, the prize distribution for the second season has been made much more balanced.
If you want to challenge yourself, you can try using the "happy beans" provided by the organizer. If the brutal outcome of the first round was due to the prize distribution issue, then we have reason to look forward to the results of the second season to see whether the temptation of the grand prize ignites greed or if human nature is inherently like this.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
