How to Mint Synths
Last updated
Last updated
Our Yam Synths site allows you to mint synths. Minting a synthetic is the first step to either providing liquidity and earning UMA Rewards or being able to short a synth.
Minting synths requires a bit of background knowledge, but it pretty easy once you get the hang of it!
The date after the synth name represents the expiry date of the synth. In the example above, "uSTONKS-JUN21" means that the the uSTONKS synth will expire at the end of June 2021.
The first thing you need to do is determine what collateral is required to mint the synth you are interested in and make sure you have that collateral in your wallet. In the example above, uSTONKS requires USDC to mint.
If you don't have any, you can usually buy the collateral from Uniswap, sushiswap, or another exchange.
You can find what the collateral is on the Yam Synths website or by looking at the specific token in the #synthetic-tokens of these docs.
When initially minting a synth, you are only allowed to mint at or above the Global Collateralization Ratio (GCR). This global collateralization ratio varies, but the Yam Synths interface will show you what it is and won't let you mint below it. You can decrease your collateral ratio (CR) after minting but it requires a few steps that we will cover in another section.
For example:
1. You have 10 ETH of collateral you want to mint with. 2. The average collateral/synth ratio of all other minters of this synth is 100 synth/1 ETH 3. You can mint up to 1000 synth with your 10 ETH (10*100)
You can see in the example above that the contract never actually needs to query a price for ETH or the Synth. The Yam Synths website will query prices and use that to show you what the GCR is, but the contract never needs to. That's pretty cool!
Follow the steps on the website to mint your synth and once that is done we can move on to the next step, to LP your synth for rewards, or sell it to go short.
As always, if you still have questions, come ask in our discord server.
