Forward the Original Title‘巨头 VC 间的博弈：一文了解 Paradigm 及 Lido 支持的再质押协议 Symbiotic’

As one of the few hot narratives in the current bull market, the re-staking sector has welcomed another heavyweight player. On June 11, Symbiotic announced the completion of its initial deployment and raised $5.8 million in a seed round led by Paradigm and Cyber Fund. Within five hours of its launch, the staked wstETH on Symbiotic reached its limit, demonstrating a strong momentum.

Considering that the current re-staking protocol EigenLayer supports only ETH and some ETH derivative staking, while Symbiotic supports staking of any asset following the ERC-20 token standard, the two may become direct competitors. According to a previous report by CoinDesk, this financing is actually a contest among major VCs. Several insiders revealed that EigenLayer co-founder Sreeram Kannan had rejected Paradigm’s investment, opting instead for a16z. Meanwhile, Cyber Fund was founded by Lido co-founders Konstantin Lomashuk and Vasiliy Shapovalov. Although Cyber Fund publicly acknowledged the pioneering work EigenLayer has done in re-staking, it is not hard to imagine that this investment is also a measure to counter EigenLayer’s encroachment on its market share.

So, what exactly is the Symbiotic re-staking protocol?

Introduction to Symbiotic

According to official documentation, Symbiotic is a shared security protocol that acts as a coordination layer, allowing network builders to control and adjust their (re)staking strategies in a permissionless manner.

Advantages of the Protocol:

Flexibility from Modularity

Symbiotic offers comprehensive control over all aspects of (re)staking strategies, including supported staking assets, choice of node operators, rewards, penalties, and related settlement mechanisms. All participants have the flexibility to join or leave Symbiotic as they choose.

Risk Minimization through Immutability

The use of immutable core contracts on Ethereum eliminates external governance risks and single points of failure. Symbiotic’s contract design minimizes execution layer risks to the greatest extent possible.

Enhanced Capital Efficiency through Re-staking and Reputation-Based Curation

The permissionless, multi-asset, and network-agnostic design enables scalable and highly capital-efficient economic security. Additionally, the evolving operator-centric cross-network reputation system will further enhance the capital efficiency for network builders.

Core Modules of Symbiotic

The Symbiotic protocol is composed of five interconnected modules: collateral for economic security, the treasury of the staking layer, operators of the infrastructure layer, resolvers of the arbitration layer, and the network of the service layer.

Collateral

Collateral improves capital efficiency and scalability by using assets held outside the Symbiotic protocol (e.g., DeFi positions on networks other than Ethereum) to secure the Symbiotic network.

Symbiotic achieves this by separating the ability to forfeit assets from the underlying assets themselves, similar to how liquid staking tokens tokenize underlying staking positions. Technically, collateral positions in Symbiotic are ERC-20 tokens with extended capabilities to handle forfeiture.

Collateral tokens are minted and deposited into the treasury by users who own assets or want to re-stake positions. The treasury delegates collateral to operators within the Symbiotic network. The treasury defines acceptable collateral, and the network must accept the collateral and terms (such as forfeiture limits) to receive rewards.

Treasury

Treasury is Symbiotic’s delegation and re-staking management layer, with functionalities including:

Accounting: The Treasury handles deposits, withdrawals, and forfeitures of collateral, subsequently managing the associated assets. Delegation Strategy: Treasury deployers/owners set delegation and re-staking strategies for operators on the Symbiotic network. Reward Distribution: The Treasury allocates the network’s staking rewards to collateral depositors.

The Treasury can be deployed in an immutable, pre-configured manner, or it can be assigned an owner who can update Treasury parameters. Operators and custodians, such as cryptocurrency institutions or liquidity (re)staking protocols, are expected to use the Treasury to create differentiated products, such as:

Operator-Specific Treasury: Operators can create a Treasury and re-stake collateral onto their infrastructure through any network configuration. Operators can create multiple Treasuries with different configurations to serve clients without requiring additional node infrastructure. Multi-Operator Treasury: Configures re-staking networks and delegation strategies for different operators. The Treasury can also set custom forfeiture limits, capping the amount of collateral forfeitable for specific operators or networks. These commitment terms need to be recognized by the network providing curation services. Immutable Pre-Configured Treasury: The Treasury can be deployed with unchangeable pre-configured rules, preventing the risk of Treasury managers adding extra re-staking networks or altering configurations in any way.

Operator

Operators are entities that run decentralized network infrastructure both within and outside the Symbiotic ecosystem. The Symbiotic protocol creates an operator registry that logs interactions with the protocol, allowing participants to attach credentials and other data to operator entities. In the initial version, this includes metadata provided by the operators themselves and data generated through interactions with the Symbiotic protocol, such as:

• Networks the operator has opted into
• Associated Treasuries and re-staked collateral within those Treasuries
• Historical forfeiture logs and all other interaction records with the Symbiotic ecosystem

A significant advantage of the Symbiotic protocol and its Treasury system is that operators can receive staking shares for the same set of node infrastructure across different supported networks from various partners (via Treasuries). This system enables node operators to obtain shares from stakers with different risk profiles without the need to establish separate infrastructure for each.

Solvers

Symbiotic introduces Solvers to support various models for handling forfeiture events. Solvers are contracts or entities capable of vetoing forfeiture events forwarded from the network. These are determined by terms proposed by the network and accepted by the Treasuries seeking collateral support for operators. A Treasury can allow multiple different (or no) Solvers to cover all its collateral. Additionally, decentralized dispute resolution frameworks such as UMA, Kleros, and reality.eth can serve as Solvers. Furthermore, Symbiotic protocol participants can be given extra security through veto mechanisms requiring a quorum or through specific forfeiture events.

Networks

In Symbiotic, a network is defined as any protocol that requires decentralized infrastructure networks to provide services within the crypto economy. This includes tasks such as validating and ordering transactions, supplying off-chain data to applications in the crypto economy, or guaranteeing cross-network interactions for users, thereby enabling developers to launch decentralized applications.

Decentralized infrastructure networks can leverage Symbiotic to gain security in the form of operator and economic support. In some cases, protocols may consist of multiple sub-networks with different infrastructure roles. The modular design of the Symbiotic protocol allows developers of such protocols to define participation rules for participants opting into any sub-network.

Symbiotic Ecosystem Progress

According to sources cited by CoinDesk, Renzo has initiated discussions regarding the integration of Symbiotic following its launch. Additionally, Ether.Fi co-founder Mike Silgadze has expressed his anticipation for Symbiotic, stating, “I am excited about what they are working on. It looks interesting and innovative.”

Currently, the Symbiotic ecosystem includes nearly 20 partners. Here are the latest developments:

• Ethena is integrating Symbiotic with LayerZero’s Decentralized Validation Network (DVN) framework to enable cross-chain transfers of Ethena assets, such as USDe.
• Bolt, built by Chainbound, is a protocol allowing Ethereum block proposers to make credible commitments (like trustless pre-confirmations). It plans to use Symbiotic for operator set restaking and slashing.
• Hyperlane is exploring an interchain security module (ISM) powered by Symbiotic for its modular interoperability framework.
• Kalypso, a ZK-proof market supporting private inputs, uses Symbiotic restaking to guarantee proof generation validity and response time.
• Fairblock is collaborating with Symbiotic to explore a dynamic cryptographic services network (CSN) that secures assets through (re)staking and customizes security parameters, performance, and availability for different applications.
• Aori plans to combine Symbiotic restaking with stablecoin assets, making market makers and solvers accountable when interacting with its high-frequency order protocol.
• Drosera is working with the Symbiotic team to research restaking application security for Ethereum Layer 2 solutions.
• Ojo, a cross-chain oracle network, will leverage Symbiotic to enhance its economic security.
• Blockless integrates Symbiotic’s customizable security with its customizable computing infrastructure, allowing developers to create secure, network-neutral applications with complete autonomy and flexibility in shared security.
• Rollkit is exploring integrating Symbiotic restaking into its modular stack to facilitate the launch of sovereign rollups on Celestia. Initially, Symbiotic will help provide accountability for rollup sequencers, with the long-term goal of decentralizing the sequencers.
• Cycle Network, aiming to achieve seamless blockchain liquidity, will use Symbiotic to power its shared sequencers.
• Stork seeks to integrate Symbiotic restaking to enhance trustless on-chain data utilization.
• Aizel is building a verifiable AI network, researching how to utilize Symbiotic to reconfigure different node roles, ensuring verifiability from inference to execution.
• Mind Network will combine Symbiotic restaking with FHE to enhance economic and consensus security in decentralized networks.
• DOPP is developing a fully on-chain options protocol, exploring Symbiotic restaking to help its oracle network decentralize and provide specific options price feedback.

As noted by Cyber Fund, composable capital efficiency has always been a core value proposition of DeFi protocols. EigenLayer has brought efficient capital redeployment to protocols requiring security guarantees outside Ethereum. Despite initial criticism, EigenLayer has been pivotal in spurring innovation. Now, with substantial capital backing, Symbiotic enters the restaking arena, setting the stage for inevitable competition. Whether Symbiotic will become the “default choice for bootstrapping decentralized networks” as Paradigm hopes remains to be seen, but its competition with EigenLayer will undoubtedly inject new vitality into the currently sluggish DeFi sector.

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