CoinDesk Exclusive: Lido Founder and Crypto Venture Paradigm Backing New Staking Project “Symbiotic”
Symbiotic, a new staking project, is being funded by Lido founder and crypto venture Paradigm, according to sources familiar with the matter. The project stands out for its support of any ERC-20 token deposits and has already discussed integration with teams within the staking ecosystem such as AVS and LRT.
Introduction:
With the “staking craze” entering Solana, Jito, Cambrian, and six other major projects plan to launch Restaking, with SOL surpassing $140.
Background:
Capital backing and successive airdrops: How the LRT staking track became a “new gold mine.”
Table of Contents:
Potential Competitor to EigenLayer: Symbiotic
Symbiotic vs. EigenLayer
Competitors in the Staking Track
Staking has become one of the mainstream tracks on Ethereum, with the leading protocol EigenLayer attracting over $14 billion in deposits since its mainnet launch last year, making it the second-largest protocol in terms of TVL, just behind Lido.
Now, EigenLayer may face a formidable competitor. According to CoinDesk’s report, a staking project called Symbiotic has received support from Cyber Fund, Lido co-founders Konstantin Lomashuk and Vasiliy Shapovalov, as well as crypto venture firm Paradigm.
According to internal documents, Symbiotic, developed by the team behind the former staking service Stakemind, will be a permissionless staking protocol that provides a flexible mechanism for decentralized networks to coordinate node operators and economic security providers.
While these leaked documents are labeled as “preliminary” and “confidential,” several teams within the staking ecosystem, including AVS and liquidity staking teams based on EigenLayer (such as Renzo), have already indicated that they have begun discussions on how to integrate with this protocol.
Representatives from Paradigm, Symbiotic, and Cyber Fund have declined to comment on the matter.
In comparing Symbiotic and EigenLayer, both platforms allow users to restake assets deposited in other crypto protocols to help secure AVS, such as rollups, interoperability infrastructure, or oracles, and receive rewards.
The main difference lies in asset compatibility. EigenLayer only accepts ETH and LSTs deposits, while Symbiotic does not accept ETH deposits. Instead, it allows users to directly deposit any ERC-20 token, such as ETH staked in Lido (stETH). The project stated in the document:
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Screenshot of Symbiotic internal document titled “Example of collateral with ERC20 tokens. The creation of the collateral is abstracted when the user makes a deposit.”
In fact, there is more than one competitor in the staking track. In April, staking protocol Karak also received investments from institutions such as Coinbase. According to DeFiLlama data, its TVL has exceeded $500 million.
An infrastructure operator planning to integrate with Symbiotic stated, “This space is big enough to accommodate more than one participant,” but due to the project still being in stealth mode, the operator requested anonymity. They said:
Symbiotic has not made any public announcements or confirmed when it plans to launch, but insiders indicate that the platform is expected to be released by the end of this year.
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Source: DeFiLlama
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