Compiled by: bluue
Today, we are excited to announce the initial deployment of the Symbiotic protocol.
This launch marks an important milestone in achieving our vision of a permissionless, shared security protocol that can effectively drive decentralization and collaborative development of any network.
The Symbiotic Protocol is a neutral coordination framework that introduces innovative modular units that bring unique advantages to participants.
This focus provides unique benefits to Symbiotic participants:
Flexibility through modularity: Symbiotic allows the network to autonomously control all aspects of the staking process, and participants can flexibly join or exit shared security. This includes supported re-staking assets, asset ratios, caps, node operator selection mechanisms, rewards and penalties, etc.
Minimize risk through immutability: Non-upgradeable contracts on Ethereum eliminate external governance risks and single points of failure, and the concise and flexible contract design minimizes execution risks.
Capital efficiency through re-staking: Economically secure scalability and capital efficient acquisition is achieved through a permissionless, multi-asset, network-free design. An evolving, operations-centric, cross-network reputation system will further improve capital efficiency for network builders.
The evolution of shared security
Decentralized networks require coordination mechanisms to incentivize and ensure that infrastructure operators abide by the rules of the protocol.
In 2009, Bitcoin introduced the first trustless coordination mechanism, launching a decentralized network through Proof of Work (PoW).
The evolution from PoW to Proof of Stake (PoS) improves the model by focusing on economic collateral rather than raw computing power.
Symbiotic’s shared security leverages the security of existing ecosystems to provide a secure path to decentralize any network.
Symbiotic is a shared security protocol that acts as an intermediate coordination layer, giving network builders control and authority to adjust the re-staking process.
Symbiotic Ecology
The need for an economically secure decentralized network plays a key role in launching a restaking ecosystem. Symbiotic offers a highly flexible design that is suitable for protocols at any stage of decentralization.
Projects can launch a decentralized and trust-minimized network on day one with existing operators, expand the set of operators in the existing ecosystem, increase the cost of attack by increasing stake, or consolidate the ecosystem by adding multiple tokens to network stake.
Excited to announce our first collaborations exploring Symbiotic’s restaking primitives:
Ethena is integrating Symbiotic with LayerZero’s Decentralized Verification Network (DVN) to secure Ethena assets, such as $USDe, across chains.
Chainbound built the Bolt protocol, which enables Ethereum block proposers to make credible commitments, and plans to leverage Symbiotic for staking and slashing.
Hyperlane is exploring Symbiotic-powered Insecure Modules (ISMs) for a modular cross-chain interoperability framework.
Kalypso is a ZK proof market that uses Symbiotic restaking to guarantee the validity and timeliness of generated proofs.
Fairblock is exploring dynamic Cryptographic Service Networks (CSNs) secured by re-pledged assets and providing customized services.
Aori plans to integrate Symbiotic re-collateralization with stablecoin assets to ensure segregation of responsibilities in high-frequency order book protocols.
Drosera is researching the security of Ethereum Layer-2 applications based on re-staking.
Ojo is a cross-chain oracle network that will improve economic security through Symbiotic restaking.
Blockless integrates Symbiotic’s security with its computing infrastructure, giving builders full autonomy and flexibility.
Rollkit is exploring integrating Symbiotic restaking into its modular stack to support Celestia-based Rollups.
Cycle Network is a unified liquidity network that will use Symbiotic to power its shared sequencer service.
Stork is integrating Symbiotic restaking to enhance the trustlessness of on-chain data utilization.
Aizel is building a verifiable AI network and studying how to use Symbiotic re-staking to ensure the verifiability of different node roles, from reasoning to execution.
Mind Network will leverage Symbiotic’s universal restaking service, combined with FHE technology, to improve the economic and consensus security of decentralized networks.
DOPP is building a fully on-chain options protocol and is investigating how to leverage Symbiotic restaking to help decentralize its oracle network to provide a data feed for specific options prices.
Our goal is to make Symbiotic the best home for developers to build sovereign, trust-minimized applications and infrastructure.
Fundraising
To further our mission, we raised $5.8M in seed funding from Paradigm and cyber•Fund, who share our long-term vision for an open, permissionless restaking economy.
We are excited to see and support what will be built on top of the Symbiotic shared safety primitives. If you are interested in collaborating with Symbiotic, please contact us. (Related Links)
Regarding collateral tokens and deposit restrictions
The Symbiotic protocol is neutral and permissionless.
The goal of early deposits is to sustainably scale the shared security platform. Initially, the assets that participate in re-staking through the main protocol interface (related link) will be limited in size and limited to the main token ecosystem to maintain neutrality.
In subsequent stages, new pledge assets will be added based on ecosystem needs.
