CoinDesk has revealed that the founder of Lido and crypto venture Paradigm are funding a new staking project called “Symbiotic.” This project stands out for its support of any ERC-20 token deposits and has already discussed integration with teams in the staking ecosystem such as AVS and LRT.
Background:
Capital support and successive airdrops, how did the LRT staking track become 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 Ethereum’s mainstream tracks, and the leading protocol EigenLayer has attracted over $14 billion in deposits since its mainnet launch last year, making it the second-largest protocol in terms of total value locked (TVL) after Lido.
Now, EigenLayer may face a strong 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 staking service formerly known as Stakemind, will be a permissionless staking protocol providing a flexible mechanism for decentralized networks to coordinate node operators and economic security providers.
Although these exposed documents are labeled as “preliminary” and “confidential,” multiple teams in the staking ecosystem, including AVS and liquidity staking teams based on EigenLayer (such as Renzo), have already stated that they have begun discussions on how to integrate with this protocol.
Representatives from Paradigm, Symbiotic, and Cyber Fund have declined to comment on this matter.
Regarding the comparison between Symbiotic and EigenLayer, firstly, both Symbiotic and EigenLayer have a similar positioning, where users can stake assets deposited in other crypto protocols to help secure AVS, such as Rollups, interoperability infrastructure, or oracles, in order to 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 will allow users to directly deposit any ERC-20 tokens, such as ETH staked in Lido (stETH). The project states in the document:
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Screenshot of Symbiotic internal document, titled “Example of collateral with ERC20 tokens. The creation of collateral will be abstracted when a user deposits into the vault.”
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. Currently, 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 released any public announcements or confirmed when its plans will be launched, 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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