The team behind the symbiotic network, the restaking protocol means to compete with the eigenlayer, shared on Wednesday that it raised $ 29 million in a series of Series A.
The fund will expand the current team and develop the universal staking of the protocol, extending efforts from restoring only to providing support for other staking activities.
“Instead of simply focusing on shared security, the symbol provides any combination of properties to secure any type of network -modular or monolithic, L1 or L2 -while supporting usage cases that reach more than traditional staking, including insurance and other financial products,” the team shared a press release.
The Pantera Capital led the funding of the funding, which also saw participation from Coinbase Ventures and more than 100 angel investors.
Restoring is a way to use a blockchain to secure other apps. It became one of the biggest trends of the DeFI last year, with billions -billions poured into some restaking protocols of investors.
Eigenlayer is the largest winner of restakers with a total amount locked (TVL) rising to a higher $ 20 billion at its climax, before falling above just $ 7 billion recently, According to Defillama data. However, Eigenlayer still remains the largest restoration protocol, putting the project into crosshairs of rival startups such as symbiotic. Currently, the TVL of all restaking protocols has been driving around $ 14 billion.
The start to compete with a giant
Symbiotic came to the scene in 2024 In backing from Lido’s co-founders and crypto venture firm paradigbab, as an alternative to Protocol restoration Eigenlayer. Currently, the network has about $ 825 million in TVL, putting it Third place in restaking peersAccording to Defillma.
The network allows for decentralized applications, also known as actively proven services (AVS), in together -sa that secure each other. Users can restore their crypto properties they deposit in other protocols to help secure these AVSS, and accumulate some kind of reward, such as getting more yields or earning points. Symbiotic is different from eigenlayer, however, as it allows users to deposit any Ethereum ERC-20 token in the protocol, while the eigenlayer only takes ETH.
With a new funding that provides symbiotic the ability to expand beyond restoration, the start is looking to change the way investors see the staking industry as a whole.
“We are building infrastructure, and our work is to improve by a large margin,” said Misha Putiitin, the symbiotic co-founder, to CoinDesk in an interview.
Putiatin added that they make this change into account for new protocols “coming to the board, or like in an active pipeline,” which is not interested in restoring. “They don’t want to share their security, they want to build their own security vertically and their own alignment, just using us.”
Read more: Lido Co-Founders, Paradigm Secret Back to Eigenlayer Competitor as Defi Battle Form form
