Latest news with #Symbiotic
Forbes
3 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Symbiotic Releases Cross-Chain Staking As SEC Clarifies Staking
Connection of different chains with a link On May 29, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a statement that clarified protocol staking on DeFi proof-of-stake networks does not in itself constitute a securities offering. For those building and providing DeFi infrastructure that deploys staking, it is a long-awaited regulatory green light. The timing could not be better for Symbiotic, the re-staking protocol on the move, who announced 'Relay' a new universal staking protocol, earlier this week. Relay is designed to enable staking on one blockchain protocol and verify decisions across many. Relay is pitched as a 'crypto-economic' coordination layer for the modular multichain future of Web3. Symbiotic, recently completed a $29 million Series A round backed by Pantera, Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm, and hundreds of angel investors. The round helps to take on rival market leader EigenLayer, and to further fund the development of Relay. Staking is foundational to DeFI infrastructure with total value locked (TVL) market of $116.6 billion, according to DeFiLlama. Ethereum dominates this market with over $62 billion in DeFi TVL and is seen as a main destination for real-world-asset (RWA) tokenization, a market Solana is now a serious contender for. Staking is the process of distributing the economic benefits of Web3 across the network, while defraying and reducing the many risks of network participation, to help ensure the bedrock of the protocol network remains stable. New transactions are added to DeFi networks through Proof-of-take (PoS) consensus mechanisms, allowing users who stake their tokens, like ETH or SOL, to earn fees in return. Staked tokens are 'locked' in the DeFi protocol ecosystem and earn fees as new user transactions use the network digital rails. Liquid staking is very popular in DeFi as it enables earning fees from two DeFi networks. With liquid staking, once the original token is staked, a derivative Liquid Staking Token (LST) of the same value as the original staked token is issued and can be then re-staked in the DeFi ecosystem for further incentives. The LST is swapped back when the original token is un-staked. Liquid staking (re-staking) is similar to 'collateralization' in the TradFi world, popular with sophisticated financiers and asset managers, and is one of the key incentives for seasoned finance professionals to deploy capital in the Web3 ecosystem. Q2 2025 liquid staking alone accounted for over $58.9 billion in TVL across the DeFi landscape. Symbiotic's Relay enables developers to 'plug into' and unlock the ability to stake from any ecosystem to verify protocol decisions on any supported chain. This enables protocol developers to build bridges, settlement layers, oracles, and rollups without relying on multisigs or proof-of-authority setups, and without sacrificing decentralization. It also means that a protocol can secure decisions on Ethereum and execute or settle on Solana or Monad or tap into Bitcoin-based systems that support programmable layers. Algys Ievlev, co-founder of Symbiotic, says, "Until now, building secure multichain infrastructure meant expensive custom work or reliance on centralized relayers. Relay solves that. It makes verifiable, stake-backed coordination between chains as simple as a plug-in, without any trust assumptions or permissioning." The decentralized finance (DeFi) market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 53.7% from 2025 to 2030, considered a conservative estimate by many in industry. Leading crypto exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken offer staking services to their customers, facilitating broader participation in staking activities while specialist platforms like Lido, Rocket Pool, and Marinade Finance command the liquid staking market. Eigenlayer, backed by a16z, Coinbase Ventures and Polychain, is the largest and most established re-staking protocol and leads the re-staking market with $15 billion of TVL. Eigenlayer enables ETH and LSTs Allows ETH and LSTs to be re-staked to secure Actively Validated Services (AVSs), that are continuously monitor and verify services by a network of validators to ensure their integrity, security, and accuracy. Symbiotic supports a mainnet already live across 14 networks with over $1 billion staked. Relay now enables crypto's largest ecosystems to be unified into one seamless interoperable layer. The Bitcoin Network brings a $2.2 trillion market cap to add to $116 billion DeFi TVL with thousands of programmable assets across Ethereum, Solana and other protocols, now no longer siloed. Historically, developers had to choose which trade-offs to embrace when choosing protocols for projects. Relay seeks to remove 'protocol walls' by allowing protocols to use staked capital on one chain to verify and secure actions on another, whether Symbiotic is natively deployed on the protocol. Developers are already exploring use cases from fast-finality rollups to oracles and decentralized insurance layers. Relay integrates directly with Symbiotic's validator set and SDK, enabling teams to add multichain coordination without reimplementing consensus mechanisms. Symbiotic Relay's launch arrives at an opportune time. The SEC's recent statement addresses a key concern for developers about whether building protocol-level staking mechanisms could expose them to securities enforcement. The answer, for the time being, appears to be no. The SEC's ruling follows the U.K. Treasury's January legal amendment clarifying that crypto staking necessary for proof-of-stake blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana doesn't fall under the definition of a 'collective investment scheme (CIS),' and is outside the scope of the CIS regulations. In a space where regulatory uncertainty often slows innovation, that kind of clarity has been, in recent years, rare and is proving commercially valuable. It shifts the conversation from fear of noncompliance to a renewed focus on DeFi infrastructure design. Financial institutions deploying distributed ledger technologies (DLT) such as Blackrock, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs will be spurred on by more favorable regulatory signals, and the recent SEC staking statement is likely to help accelerate this. Relay's architecture, which is open-source, permissionless, and has no custodial token wrappers, is precisely the kind of model that fits into this regulatory shift. Symbiotic Relay represents a broader trend being witnessed in the DeFi landscape - the push toward a more modular and interoperable infrastructure in Web3. According to Electric Capital's 2024 Developer Report, 34% of active crypto developers now work across multiple blockchains, a significant jump from just 10% in 2015. The tooling needs to catch up. Whether Symbiotic Relay becomes a standard, or even 'the' standard remains to be seen in this very hotly contended competitive space. One thing is for sure, a week is a long time in DeFi. Symbiotic's timing couldn't be better with this week's Relay announcement on the back of last week's SEC staking clarification. For DeFi developers building the next wave of multichain apps, it might just be the interoperable plug-in they didn't know they were waiting for. For seasoned stakers, it is a killer app. Timing is everything.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Symbiotic Launches 'Relay' to Bring Secure Staking Across Chains
Symbiotic, a universal staking protocol and EigenLayer rival, has launched Relay, a software development kit (SDK) that allows protocols to stake assets on Ethereum and verify that stake across any blockchain. Staking is a system for securing blockchains in exchange for rewards. In staking systems, so-called validators commit callateral — called "stake" — for a role in processing transactions. "Restaking" protocols like Symbiotic let users reuse stake across multiple blockchains at once, offering investors the opportunity to earn extra yield. Relay is, in essence, a generalized version of Symbiotic's restaking tech — a toolkit that can bring Symbiotic-style restaking to virtually any crypto ecosystem. According to the Symbiotic team, the tech lets developers build verifiable, secure coordination layers for decentralized applications (dApps) across multiple chains. Under the hood, the SDK plugs developers into the Symbiotic network. From there, developers may configure networks to use stake on one blockchain to verify activity on another. 'This makes it easy to build bridges, oracles, rollups, or risk protocols that are secured by real stake and verifiable anywhere their users are, without having to bootstrap a validator set, trust a multisig, or sacrifice decentralization,' the team wrote in a press release. 'For users, this means multichain applications which were previously bespoke designs, fragmented, or complex, can now be easily built with verifiable security from day one.' The rollout of Relay was a central part of Symbiotic's recent $29 million Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital. The round included participation from Coinbase Ventures and a cohort of over 100 angel investors. 'Until now, building a secure multichain protocol meant choosing between trusted relayers or expensive, bespoke infrastructure,' said Algys Ievlev, co-founder of Symbiotic. 'Relay solves that. It gives builders a way to use real stake to verify real outcomes across chains without making tradeoffs on cost, security, or developer experience. We believe this will become the default way protocols coordinate across chains.' Read more: Pantera Leads $29M Funding for EigenLayer Rival Symbiotic to Expand Staking Play Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
400 layoffs planned at former Walmart robotics unit in Massachusetts
A Massachusetts automation company has announced plans to lay off hundreds of employees at a facility it purchased from Walmart earlier this year. Wilmington-based Symbiotic LLC, which develops automated warehouse technology, will cut 400 jobs at the Andover location by June 27, according to a Massachusetts Workers Adjustment Retraining Notice filed with the state on April 29. Symbiotic acquired the Andover robotics unit from Walmart for $200 million, according to a Jan. 16, 2025, press release, and up to an additional $350 million in the future, as part of an ongoing relationship between the two companies, which started in 2017. The automation company said at the time that it would develop further supply chain technology to provide 'accelerated pickup and delivery options' for Walmart customers. In turn, Walmart agreed to deploy Symbiotic technology in at least 400 of its stores over the next few years, paying the company $520 million. According to the company, the layoffs are part of Symbiotic's process of combining the robotics unit with its own existing operations. 'While [layoff] decisions like these are always difficult, we made them following a thorough post-close review of our operations to ensure we are best positioned for the future with an effective structure to continue executing our long-term growth strategy,' the company said in a statement. 'We appreciate the contributions of the impacted employees and are committed to treating every employee respectfully during this change.' Famous British rocker shares colorful exchange on stage with fan Crypto surges Trump's wealth as consumer confidence hits post-pandemic low Mass. State Lottery winner: $100,000 prize won at Boston grocery store '70s rock star plays band's classic hits at first full show in 5 years Department of Justice ends 9-year oversight of Worcester schools Sign in to access your portfolio
