June 25, 2025
The following post contains a recap of news, projects, and important updates from the Spartan Council and Core Contributors from last week.
👉TLDR
Spartan Space with Panoptic:
- Panoptic: DeFi-native options trading using Uniswap V3 — no market makers, no expirations.
- Trading strategies focus on fee generation and capital preservation, not just speculation.
- Strangles: Buying/selling a put and a call at different strike prices.
- Straddles: Buying/selling a put and a call at the same strike price.
- Risk management is key: Delta-neutral positions, capped losses, and steady yields.
- Perps vs. Options.
- New features coming soon: Backtesting tool & AI-powered trading assistants.
- Live now: BTC/USDC trading competition.
- Rosalie’s advice: Start small, stay curious, and use DeFi as a tool for financial empowerment.
Spartan Council and SIP updates
Last week Synthetix hosted a Spartan Space with Panoptic, a decentralized options trading protocol built on Uniswap V3. Burt chatted with Rosalie, who joined to talk about DeFi options, risk management, and how Panoptic is rethinking derivatives trading from the ground up.
Rosalie does marketing at Panoptic and got her start in crypto during a college blockchain course where she bought her first Bitcoin from a vending machine in Chinatown (yes, really). After hopping through internships and blockchain jobs, she’s now knee-deep in options trading (exclusively in DeFi) — no TradFi experience needed.
She’s been actively trading options for the last 3 to 4 months and is passionate about making financial education more accessible, especially in the crypto space. Rosalie went on to discuss what makes Panoptic different, mainly explaining how the platform is built on top of the Uniswap liquidity model and enables perpetual options, which don’t expire and are settled every block. So there are no centralized market makers; instead, traders borrow and buy liquidity directly from pools.
Examples of popular trading pools currently available on the Panoptic platform include:
- ETH/USDC
- BTC/USDC
- BTC/ETH
- UNI-based pools
You can also create your own markets if you want to trade any specific tokens that are on Uniswap. The platform is designed to make options trading both capital-efficient and flexible!
Rosalie then walked the audience though a couple of common strategies used on Panoptic, such as:
- Strangles: Buying/selling a put and a call at different strike prices
- Straddles: Buying/selling a put and a call at the same strike price
These are all about collecting fees during periods of price stability, but the real edge in DeFi options comes from risk management rather than speculation. Some core principles she laid out were:
- Preserving capital before chasing profits
- Building delta-neutral positions to minimize directional risk
- Always capping potential losses
- And even when your price prediction is wrong, good strategy still makes money
The Spartan Space also went into a bit of a discussion on the differences between perpetual futures and options, mainly that perps are easier to hedge and more popular for speculative trades, and options are harder to use but offer better strategic flexibility and nuanced risk profiles.
Throughout the call, Rosalie also reiterated in general some platform features worth noting:
- Perpetual options: As previously mentioned, Panoptic has perpetual options, which don’t expire like traditional options.
- User interface: The platform has a fun and interactive interface with a sleek UI and visual charts.
- Upcoming features:
- There will soon be a backtesting tool to simulate strategies.
- And the long-term vision includes AI trading assistants, natural language interfaces, and more.
Lastly, Rosalie and Burt discussed Panoptic’s current trading competition on the BTC/USDC pool, where there is a points program and some unique prizes (yes, there is a Michael Saylor pillow involved).
All in all, if you’re curious but cautious, Rosalie recommends starting small and using the platform’s educational tools — learn the mechanics before diving in deep!
