DeFi platform Synthetix, known for its synthetic assets protocol, has announced the gradual phase-out of its perpetual futures on the L2 solution Arbitrum.

Affected markets will enter a “close-only” mode, in which traders cannot open new positions or increase existing ones.

“Today, Synthetix is putting Perps on Arbitrum into close-only mode, shifting resources to the flagship V3 deployment on Base. This move aims to provide traders with the most liquid, reliable, and user-friendly on-chain derivatives experience,” the team explained.

They also plan to discontinue support for USDx on Arbitrum, the stable asset used for collateralizing financial instruments.

“The decision follows Synthetix’s pivot toward vertical integration in its product strategy,” the project representatives said.

Perps is a decentralized platform for perpetual futures trading built on the Synthetix protocol. Users can trade various synthetic crypto assets with leverage. The third version of Synthetix operates on both Base and Arbitrum, two Ethereum Layer-2 solutions employing optimistic rollups.

Base’s ecosystem now surpasses Arbitrum in total value locked (TVL).

Arbitrum also lags behind in on-chain metrics such as daily transaction volume and the number of active addresses.

Base, developed on the OP Stack architecture from Optimism, is backed by crypto exchange Coinbase. The L2 solution does not have its own governance token.

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