1 month ago
The squad down the Symbiotic network, the restaking protocol meant to rival EigenLayer, shared Wednesday that it had raised $29 cardinal successful a Series A round.
The backing volition grow the existent squad and lend to the protocol’s Universal Staking framework, broadening its efforts from conscionable restaking to including providing enactment for different staking activities.
“Rather than focusing solely connected shared security, Symbiotic enables immoderate operation of assets to unafraid immoderate people of network—modular oregon monolithic, L1 oregon L2—while supporting usage cases that widen good beyond accepted staking, including security and different fiscal products,” the squad shared successful a property release.
Pantera Capital led the backing round, which besides saw information from Coinbase Ventures and implicit 100 angel investors.
Restaking is simply a mode to usage a blockchain to unafraid different apps. It became 1 of the biggest DeFi trends past year, with billions being poured into immoderate restaking protocols by investors.
EigenLayer was the biggest victor among the restakers with Total Value Locked (TVL) rising arsenic precocious arsenic $20 cardinal astatine its peak, earlier tumbling backmost to conscionable supra $7 cardinal recently, according to DefiLlama data. However, EigenLayer inactive remains the biggest restaking protocol, putting the task successful the crosshairs of rival startups similar Symbiotic. Currently, the TVL of each restaking protocols hovers astir $14 billion.
The startup to rival a giant
Symbiotic came to the country successful 2024 with backing from Lido’s co-founders and crypto task steadfast Paradigm, arsenic an alternate to restaking protocol EigenLayer. Currently, the web has astir $825 cardinal successful TVL, putting it successful third spot among restaking peers, according to DefiLlama.
The web allows for decentralized applications, besides known arsenic actively validated services (AVS), to collectively unafraid each other. Users tin past restake their crypto assets that they've deposited successful different protocols to assistance unafraid these AVSs, and accumulate immoderate benignant of reward, similar extract much output oregon gain points. Symbiotic differs from EigenLayer, however, due to the fact that it allows users to deposit immoderate Ethereum ERC-20 token into the protocol, portion EigenLayer conscionable takes ETH.
With the caller backing circular giving Symbiotic the quality to grow beyond restaking, the startup is looking to alteration the mode investors comprehend the staking manufacture arsenic a whole.
“We are gathering infrastructure, and our occupation is to amended connected that by a immense margin,” said Misha Putiatin, the co-founder of Symbiotic, to CoinDesk successful an interview.
Putiatin added that they are making this displacement to relationship for caller protocols “that are coming connected board, oregon similar successful an progressive pipeline,” that are not funny successful restaking. “They don't privation to stock their security, they privation to physique their ain information vertical and their ain alignment, conscionable utilizing us.”
Read more: Lido Co-Founders, Paradigm Secretly Back EigenLayer Competitor arsenic DeFi Battle Lines Form
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