Octane by Syndicate

Inspiration

Though we have already submitted an application through the accelerator we decided to talk on the challenge to enter the hackathon, our inspiration to build the syndicate came from how successful redacted and convex have been on the EVM. We believed that a system like this has been lacking in the IBC for a long time and we have seen governance be overhauled by insider interest, and incentives be directed to users/protocols that were not aligned with the protocols that bootstrapped, and harbored them. As a team that has survived, the fantom debacle with solidly, the Terra/UST collapse and the inevitable FTX collapse of capital we stayed confident and interested to build and contribute to the better and ethical future of crypto.

What it does

Syndicate acts a broker for users that have voting power. We currently were supporting the Comdex ecosystem with Veharbor, to maximize the emissions for harbor to cswap pools. Ultimately, the project on Comdex has been put on because of complications with their products. So we decided to build it on chains that support 2 protocols, Astroport and Mars. With astroport, you can delegate your VP to Syndicate, and Syndicate will make a bribe marketplace interface that allows protocols to place bribes for emissions to the pools that they want emissions to be directed to. A fairly simple idea, where we act as broker and 3rd party that helps support efficient liquidity distribution, and allow new pairs bootstrap efficiently without pool 3 dilution.

How we built it:

We have not built the Astroport interface yet, nor for Mars since we were encouraged later to enter the hackathon we will develop it over the coming weeks, we do have a mockup for what we were building on Comdex.

Challenges we ran into: We ran into a few challenges on Comdex,

1. Communication: Since half of our team was based in India, it was difficult to coordinate the weekly meetings, code reviews and team bonding. There was a disconnect, which eventually closed we closed the gap on and received better results.
   1. PMF: Our product market fit since it hasn't been built was hard to test because it relies on the success of the underlying protocols its built on, we realized this so we decided to co-market with Comdex and then later on look for a new ecosystem that has already been established, so we can have a better gauge on if the product will be sticky and attract users.
   2. Technical skillset: 3 team members including myself are not technically skilled when it comes to coding etc. So we needed to heavily lean on the other team members to be open and honest about their skillset, which started off difficult but eventually became an easy fix when we learned more about how the JS and most base coding languages work.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

We built a product that was going through Testnet, with a non-technical team, 1 back-end dev and a contract FE, and what we got was pretty darn good. We are proud of how far we came as a team, and are the most grateful for what we learned as a team as we moved through the challenges we faced.

What we learned:

TLDR, if you look above we learned a lot of lessons. I would see the most important is, you know what you know, and its okay to lean on other skillsets if its something you cant handle (thats why you have a team). Everyone has their own unique skillset and you have to realize that, people in positions they want to be in are far more effective than people who are there to collect a check or dont see your collective vision. Lastly, the process is the most enjoyable part, the reward and final product was great building, but the process especially over coming the challenges, was the best part. The long nights, the language barrier, developers ghosting us, the rigorous governance process, the negative feedback regarding bribes, the list goes on. I will miss all of it!

What's next for Syndicate

Syndicate is ready to take on the IBC and protocols that want to work with us on helping onboard users and protocols that align with values we were built on, ethics and integrity. We are open to exploring chains, and a new home such as Osmosis, Neutron or Injective!

Built With

• cosmwasm
• next.js
• rust