Crypto Society Ama recap with Synchrony 9th, September 2021

18 min readSep 10, 2021

Synchrony is an ecosystem for automated on-chain asset management built by a team with over two decades of systems development for tier-1 financial institutions — Synchrony is focused on streamlining Defi for user of all levels of experience.

Bilo/Crypto Society

Dear Synchrony Team, it’s our pleasure to have you with us today. I would like to welcome you here on behalf of our entire community.

Andy K

Thank you so much for having us!

Maurice Chalfin

Yes! we’re excited to finally be here 🙂

Bilo | Crypto Society

Could we begin with a brief history of yourselves and your team, and your roles at Synchrony and what you were doing before Synchrony?

Maurice Chalfin

My name is Maurice, I am the marketing and community lead. My background is in the fashion and cycling worlds — doing production, design, and managing projects and teams. (prayer hands emoji) 😉

Andrew | Synchrony

Hey Crypto Society, my name is Andrew,

I’m the architect of Synchrony — Software Engineer for tier-1 financial institutions — Citibank / UOB / Ageas, ex-director of Prive Technologies a Hong Kong based Fintech company. Specialize in Execution Platforms and Algorithmic portfolio management solutions.

I’ve been an algo trader for the past 3 years, must be doing something right cause I’m not homeless.

Andy K

I am the strategist of Synchrony. I got started in crypto in 2010 while I was running a R&D dept for a Berkshire Hathaway company. Built a lot of applications and systems for them and then eventually something similar for the marketing agency c4 analytics. I got rekt super hard on mt. gox >1000BTC so in some ways I am a vet. I got into more of the TA and financial side in 2017–2018 and then went back to school for smart contract development in 2019

It’s been a wild ride building on Solana since it was ~6$ LOL.

We built on Solana because of the long-term potential so this is an absolute dream come true :)

Bilo | Crypto Society

Solana is great — we are very excited and optimistic about the future.

Can you tell us about why you thought Synchrony needed to be built and what problem it solves?

Andrew | Synchrony

SO, I’ve been an algo trader for most of my life, the first program I ever wrote was a bot that would trade FX basically on a coin flip since charts do seem to follow a random walk. You can imagine how profitable that was…

But for the past 3 years it has been what I’ve been doing full time.

Andy tried to get me into doing it for Defi last December, but I initially found it very overwhelming, so I just wrote a bot to copy all his on-chain transactions.

Andy K

There are several problems it solves in the end. I think one of the main problems is the fact that we only have one second per second of time to spend and there is far more information being created than that at any given movement. Look at YouTube- 3.4 years generated EVERY HOUR. So, some of this seeks to provide layered, consolidated, and ultimately bespoke data.

Andrew | Synchrony

That was really the driving force behind Synchrony, a means to simplify user entry into Defi to spur user adoption.

So, it is a means to streamline participants interaction with blockchain and defi. A place where people can build things for themselves and for each other.

Bilo | Crypto Society

These are certainly excellent use cases.

Maurice Chalfin

We think so! 🐸

Bilo | Crypto Society

How would you describe Synchrony if you were talking to someone unfamiliar with trading and more specifically digital assets?

Andrew | Synchrony

Simply: it’s a platform where you can copy what other successful traders are doing.

But there are other problems it solves…

A lot of asset management on chain is not decentralised. They bottom out in a single point of failure which is typically the asset manager. The way that protocols seek to offset this risk is by imposing very strict limitations on how the strategies manager can utilize or how they interact with the pool’s underlying assets.

Synchrony can remove all these limitations without restricting an “asset manager” or trader in any shape or form.

Bilo | Crypto Society

That’s really useful. Thanks for the explanation

Why did you choose to build exclusively for Solana? or do you have plans to branch out?

Andrew | Synchrony

We choose Solana specifically because on Ethereum transaction fees are value destroying. The slow transaction times mean price divergence, And the nature of the mempool encourages front running.

Andy K

We have plans to branch out, but we are going to get Solana V1 looking nice before we look elsewhere. We also have a g2m (g2m = go to market) strategy to hit other key chains.

Andrew | Synchrony

Solana solves all these issues and more.

Also, when you work as an engineer for as long as I have, you learn there are two general ways to bet on a winner in a tech race.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Totally agree ❤️

Andrew | Synchrony

The first is the community that supports a product — certainly sometimes an inferior product wins due to the community around it.

JavaScript… *cough*

The second is the solution that scales the best.

Andy K

In the end a lot of users don’t really care what chain they are on. We are trying to bridge the space between intention an outcome for the user. I don’t care really if I am yield farming or if I am lp mining etc. I want my money to work harder for me.

Andrew | Synchrony

Solana, for me is the clear winner. + I’m a language snob.

I love Rust!

I fully believe Rust will supersede C++

C++ is my “native” language too.

Bilo | Crypto Society

RUST is where it’s at.

Andy K

100%

Maurice Chalfin

This is gunna beee sweeeeet ❤️

Bilo | Crypto Society

What is Index investing?

Andrew | Synchrony

Indices are basically algorithms that perform a calculation over a specific data set.

The dataset in finance is typically stocks and they take the form of the FTSE100 or the S&P500. These indices weight the top 100 and 500 stocks of their respective stock market by market capitalization.

To invest into an index means to build a portfolio that tracks an index.

For retail this typically takes the form of an ETF.

It is a means to get diversified exposure to a sector, therefore, mitigating risk to some degree.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Nice — I like it.

Andrew | Synchrony

Indices generally outperform actively managed funds. The last time I looked it was something like over 80% of funds underperform.

Andy K

Vanguard study from 2019 I believe is where we got that.

Andrew | Synchrony

You can have a look on SPIVA too.

SPIVA | S&P Dow Jones Indices

S&P Indices

https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/research-insights/spiva/

Maurice Chalfin

As of 2021 ETFs are a USD 8tn industry and growing at an annual rate of 26%7. Over the past ten (10) years, 82% of fund managers fell short of their S&P500 benchmark, with 94% failing over twenty (20) years. Similarly, 73% did not match up to the S&P Midcap 400, while 76% also underperformed the S&P Small Cap 6008.

Bilo | Crypto Society

There are quite a few copy trading platforms. What separates Synchrony from the rest?

Andrew | Synchrony

We are familiar with two copy-trading protocols.

Alphr and Dexe

With Alphr, there are several issues that plague this protocol.

Firstly, being built on Ethereum is a bit of a non-starter for copy-trading. No DEXs on Ethereum implement a limit order book. But the bigger issues are the transaction costs and the transaction speeds.

As mentioned, the transaction costs are value destroying, so the way that Alphr tries to offset this is by pooling together transactions.

The protocol basically waits for a certain threshold of “mirrored” transactions and executes them at the same time. And thus, further increases the time between the initial trade and the copy-trade. Affording greater price divergence

We don’t have that issue on Solana because of the transaction speeds. But it is also important to note that we let you copy-trade any wallet.

The way we can do this trustlessley is by utilizing indices to govern the behaviour or a user’s copy-trade wallet. This is the “secret sauce”.

Andy K

Synchrony is also not exclusively copy-trading. Copy-trading is one of three of our main value propositions.

Bilo | Crypto Society

How does a user pick and choose which wallets to copy? How do they see the success of that wallet holder?

Andy K

indexing and analytics bring a substantial amount of value to the platform. Even the wallet analytics is a fascinating tool (think zapper but for creeping on other wallets).

The wallets will also have a leader board which gamifies some of the experience as well.

We will be able to run competitions etc to help promote this with KOLs.

Glad you asked that question lol

Maurice Chalfin

Bilo | Crypto Society

why are you dancing alone? need a partner?

Maurice Chalfin

Don’t threaten us with a good time…

Bilo | Crypto Society

hahaha — you have ADHD too?

Andy K

Hhhahah, no we just have so much fun in this space.

The culture here is something that doesn’t get mentioned enough.

And that’s another great thing about Solana — it isn’t as competitive.

When Raydium popped up, SBF said they are stopping serum UXUI.

There is SOOOO MUCH ROOM TO GROW

12T mcap is stock markets we are going to eclipse that because there is so much more utility out of blockchain than some static investment. This is literally the future.

Bilo | Crypto Society

I’m glad you guys have fun and enjoy what you do. Adds so much passion ❤️

Bilo | Crypto Society

Please tell us a little more about your marketplace explorer and how that works

Andy K

Absolutely!

We want you to be able to transact with everything in one location.

Maurice Chalfin

(This is something @mrplckles holds near and dear to his ❤️)

Andy K

We are building an API to help accommodate this. But something I noticed that is frustrating, for example, is no raydium you are hopping from page to page and re connecting your wallet. it is annoying and not needed (We love the RAY team, but this is something we wanted to get around)

My old boss used to say you don’t need to be smart, just identify and copy effectively. So, we looked at amazon, and took their browser/search.

Why re-invent the wheel? they pay big bucks for UXUI and data organization.

These are products you want to be able to see everything, do all the research and see the latest news before you commit your funds to anything. We are just trying to facilitate user intention.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Yaaaay!

Does Synchrony have plans to integrate TA education into the platform by seeing what works and what doesn’t via copy trading and analysis of successful trading wallets?

Andy K

Absolutely, we do have a partnership we can’t discuss at this time that is going to be a HUGE help. I am really excited about that. some fantastic partnerships in the pipeline that literally give me goosebumps thinking about how lucky we are to be able to be working with such talent. EDU is huge though.

We are early to the game! it is partially our job to bring this to the masses.

it is a super specific overlap and the only way to get around that is through proper education.

The problem now is that this is at the intersection of fintech and blockchain.

Bilo | Crypto Society

You can’t talk about the partnership?

Maurice Chalfin

Not right now — soon

Andy K

Super soon. We just want to help make this sort of partnership announcement go as far as possible.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Ok you can send me a dm then 😋

Andy K

yeah, we can talk offline and off the record for sure

secrets… not a fan but the mystique is alluring ;)

Bilo | Crypto Society

What is the Synchrony token used for? Can you describe the Tokenomics?

Andy K

Oooh man, I love token utility.

Maurice Chalfin

Utilitarianism is kinda our thang.

Andy K

obviously, the standard fare of sharing in revenue generated by the platform. You can stake to purchase some of our advanced analytics. you can stake for cosmetic bonuses, custom dashboard etc. when we integrate some of the social features the amount you hold/stake will also be able to be displayed for those who like to flex ;). We are also using staking as a means to purchase banner space for ads and less traditional use cases as well. We want to turn staking SCY into a currency in its own right.

Maurice Chalfin

👀

Andy K

So basically, there are three primary functions — Profit sharing.

Cosmetic / community perks/accolades

As a currency to buy modules — (I copied this from the DLC model in videogames)

Bilo | Crypto Society

Ummm pls explain further. Need more data.

Andrew | Synchrony

Total SCY supply is 1,000,000,000.00 there will never be any more SCY minted.

Team is 15% of the total supply vested on a 36-month timeline that start to unlock after one year.

Advisory is 5% vested on the same timeline as team.

Seed is 3% vested on a 15-month timeline with monthly emissions — 5% unlocked at TGE

Strategic (Private) is 12% of total token supply vested on a 12-month timeline /w 10% unlocked at TGE

The rest of the tokens are split between liquidity, ecosystem, community and staking

Andy K

But not scammy EA DLC pay to win, more like if you want a heatmap of wallet interactions… we also have a partnership with some data scientists and RPC provider on board and we are going to really lean into this.

let’s talk about layering data. We only have one second per second- so how to you solve this. Get more of yourself or get better data.

We went down the better data route, on chain + off chain + on platform + macro events (e.g., price action in other chains) there is so much to be mined from this. It isn’t about getting the data so much as using it effectively to make better decisions.

This also opens an interesting door for a subscription service that provides an alternative source of income for the platform.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Where do the AMA hosts fit in? 😇

Bilo | Crypto Society

When is your public sale?

Andy K

Our public sale is in flux. Officially is q1 2022 but we like to under promise.

Maurice Chalfin

And overachieve

Andy K

A sooner launch is highly likely, but I don’t want to misguide expectations here. Would have been super cool if this pump happened a month later.

So much pressure…LOL

Andrew | Synchrony

That’s the “use by” date. It really depends on market sentiment

Andy K

No sleep in crypto. You get seasoned after a while, aged a bit.

Andrew | Synchrony

Like wine

Andy K

Or milk.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Does Synchrony have a governance process? Can you briefly describe how it all works?

Maurice Chalfin

In order to promote decentralised community governance for the network, SCY would allow holders to propose and vote on on-chain governance proposals to determine future features and/or parameters of Synchrony. Some examples of proposals are:

• implementation priority of integrations with other protocols.

• utility features for the SCY token; and

• parameter adjustment for certain Synchrony composed indices.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Noice,

Bearing in mind that nothing is hidden on the blockchain, how do you address potential privacy issues that may arise from copy trading and wallet analysis for traders that monetize their work through VIP forums or such?

Andy K

That’s the thing, people can already do that it is just not clean.

that’s the beauty and the drawback of blockchain. Don’t trust, verify.

This is how you have trustlessness, another reason why blockchain will change the world.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Love that answer

Andy K

We can only have 150 meaningful connections (or something like that). Back to more tribal forms of human interaction. We have gone away from that. I have like 100- “friends” on FB. But are they friends?

What has happened instead, is a general mistrust of people.

On chain immutable etc, will reintroduce some of that.

Bilo | Crypto Society

On the flip side of the last question; Is there a means for these traders to monetize their work through Synchrony?

Andy K

Ish, but the point is I can meet someone who says something and can verify if that something is on chain. Yeah, there is profit sharing for sure, they get a cut.

Maurice Chalfin

we’re all about elevating the community.

Bilo | Crypto Society

What are you currently working on, and can you describe your future roadmap?

Andy K

So big milestones- Demo Day on the 14th, then TGE sometime between then and 2022. TGE will launch our synchrony indexes.

Maurice Chalfin

Here is our roadmap.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Thanks

Have you attended previous Crypto Society AMA’s?

Maurice Chalfin

No this is the first!

Andrew | Synchrony

Not while I’ve been awake

Andy K

No, I’ve been a member here for a bit though! love this community and the team.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Well, I must warn you that this is the part where I get a little sensitive if my demands aren’t met… I may get a little violent.

Maurice Chalfin

Hahaha please demand away, we’ll try to oblige.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Is there any exclusive breaking news about Synchrony that you could share with us here today?Bilo | Crypto Society

Thanks

Have you attended previous Crypto Society AMA’s?

Maurice Chalfin

No this is the first!

Andrew | Synchrony

Not while I’ve been awake

Andy K

No, I’ve been a member here for a bit though! love this community and the team.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Well, I must warn you that this is the part where I get a little sensitive if my demands aren’t met… I may get a little violent.

Maurice Chalfin

Hahaha please demand away, we’ll try to oblige.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Is there any exclusive breaking news about Synchrony that you could share with us here today?

Synchrony team: What do we do??? he’s nuts, we better just give in.

Maurice Chalfin

Wait for the mic drop, its coming.

Andy K

We built an API for the Solana ecosystem that has all the current active projects with their price data and supplemental information added to it.

We will make this available to all builders and the SOL community on Tuesday. This is an amazing project and are going to use it as part of our expansion strategy.

Maurice Chalfin

INSIDER ALPHA, heard it here first.

Andy K

yeah, there is even more to it, but this is all I am allowed to say now while we figure out some of the details. A lot more. either way we are so excited to be able to build this. Seriously a dream come true.

Bilo | Crypto Society

hahahaha — Thank yooooooooooo ❤️

You guys are awesome and smart as hell…Do you wish to let us know anything else that was not covered in the questions above?

Andrew | Synchrony

Vote for my frog for the mascot for Synchrony.

We have some ecosystem partnerships coming up that are HUGE. We have that mascot campaign going on as well if anybody wants to earn some SCY. btw I love frogs. Just putting that out there.

We are going to be at BTC week in LA in Nov, Lisbon, NFT con and possibly Chicago to visit FTX as well.

Bilo | Crypto Society

Noice — maybe we meet there then 🙂

Maurice Chalfin

we’re also super community focused and will be front and centre working with the community using their feedback to help us develop our vision.

Andy K

absolutely! if anybody is going to be at any of those things give us a shout, I love IRL.

That is so much better for me than zoom or tg.

Maurice Chalfin

IRL interactions we promote

Crypto Society

Currently YEILD FARMING is BOOMING in the Crypto market.

What are the next steps you will take in this area are you going to collaborate in the near future? Do you support the STAKING program? If it is true that you support the STAKING program, how do you do your work in this market system? Do investors need certain conditions? When investors want to hold your tokens. Do you have plans to burn and then buy back?

Andrew | Synchrony

Synchrony Indices can evaluate any on-chain instrument — they are dataset agnostic, yield farms / liquidity pools are two specific instruments we have focused on as you rightly mentioned they are booming, and this is the main attraction for defi participants.

Namely we do have a Raydium LP Index and will be releasing a Yield farming index in the near future.

Crypto Society

What is your plan for global expansion? At present, which market does it focus on, or is it focused on building and growing to gain customers, users and partners? 🇨🇰🇨🇱🇨🇰🇨🇱🇨🇰🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇱🇨🇰🇨🇱

Andy K

We have a significant amount of our budget dedicated to marketing efforts. I started my own marketing agency before this job and was the operations manager at C4 Analytics — so this is def a top priority. we have some heavy hitters in the marketing space. APEC (I am originally from Hong Kong so SE Asia is a big one) namely- Korea, china, Vietnam etc., Europe, North America. We are looking to get into high adoption areas like Nigeria as well.

Good projects with no marketing can fail but bad projects with good can succeed. We are a good project, and we want good marketing

Crypto Society

NFT is getting more popular now days. It looks like NFT has a bright future. Do you guys have any plan to include NFT’s to your project?

Maurice Chalfin

We have a partnership announcement ready soon — very much planning on some NFT related things.

Crypto Society

How important is the community to you? and how can we collaborate or help you for the development of the project?

Maurice Chalfin

Community is #1 — w/o you guys we have nothing really. we will collaborate with the community for user generated content, feedback on features, integrations, etc

Crypto Society

I see for the most part Community is the most important thing in a project.

Q. How do you make your investors and community happy to join your platform? What advantages will you give your community?

Andy K

There is no synchrony without users. Onboarding users and keeping them on is our goal. marketing opens the door, but having a product that services intention is what will keep them on. For me part of this will really be demonstrated when we cycle into the bear market. We want to provide a service that will beat banks in a bear market.

Crypto Society

Marketing strategy is very important for every project. What are your plans for this? How will you expand your relationships and build strong communities in both English and non-English speaking countries? 🚘🚘🚘🚘🚘🚘🚘🚘🚘

Andy K

We have strategic partnerships with about 10+ languages. Our narrative needs to make sense in all languages. Language is also a symptom of intention.

Crypto Society

Why have you chosen the name Synchrony? Will it be possible to create your own indices?

Andrew | Synchrony

We chose the name Synchrony as it encapsulates what the project is and what it aims to do, Defi in Synchrony… Synchronizing your wallet or investments to another wallet or strategy.

You will be able to create your own index, the indices are completely configurable, and each instance of an instance exists as a pool for other users to participate in.

Crypto Society

As we know Web3 in many other projects is difficult to access.

How do you make Web3 You easy for anyone to access? I see that your wallet is under development, to make it easier to explore NFT and to make DeFi easy for anyone to access and who can lend DeFi or DEX?

Andy K

Aaah this is a great question that could be solved with a strategic NFT partnership ;) ;) ;) ;)

Andrew | Synchrony

It is part of the ethos of the platform… to build things for yourself and each other.

Crypto Society

NFT is really a hot topic in the cryptocurrency market now. How is your project planning to integrate it with DeFi?

Andy K

As an artist myself I do believe NFTs are part of the future. Blockchain is the world computer and NFTs represent some of the audio and visual processing imo. While we do have plans to support them, personally I feel like there is a hardware gap preventing the true value of NFTs to be demonstrated. I would love to spend hours talking about this subject. Perhaps another day though.

Maurice Chalfin

Hey Crypto Society,

We have a Demo Day Rehearsal coming very soon so we have to say goodbye for now. please stay tuned to our socials and please join for Demo Day next Tuesday September 14th https://www.sanctor.com/demodayhttps://www.eventbrite.com/e/sanctor-turbo-demo-day-alpha-class-tickets-167111481941