Symbiotic raises $29M for staking-based universal coordination layer

Cryptocurrency staking protocol Symbiotic closed a $29 million Series A funding round led by Web3-focused investment firms, including Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures, to support the launch of a new economic coordination layer for blockchain security.

The round included more than 100 angel investors, with participation from major industry players including Aave, Polygon and StarkWare, the company said in an April 23 announcement shared with Cointelegraph.

The closing of the funding round also marks the launch of Symbiotic’s Universal Staking Framework, which aims to be an economic coordination layer that bolsters blockchain security via staking.

The new staking layer enables the use of any combination of cryptocurrencies to secure networks, including monolithic and modular layer-1 and layer-2 blockchains, the announcement stated.

“We’ve created a modular framework that lets protocols evolve security models over time while efficiently coordinating risk,” Misha Putiatin, co-founder of Symbiotic, told Cointelegraph. “This empowers protocols at every stage of their lifecycle to evolve their security models seamlessly without rebuilding infrastructure.”

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The “next step” in blockchain infrastructure

The new staking layer is the “next step in blockchain infrastructure” due to unlocking “economic coordination between assets and networks that were previously impossible,” according to Paul Veradittakit, managing partner at Pantera Capital.

“As the number and variety of onchain assets continue to increase, Symbiotic allows them to easily serve as economic security while enabling entirely new use cases across DeFi,” he added.

Blockchain networks looking to bolster security can adopt Symbiotic’s network of decentralized validators that bring “programmable security” without the need to modify infrastructure.

According to the company, 14 networks, including Hyperlane, Spark and Avail, have already adopted the new coordination layer, with 20 more expected to follow.

The staking layer enables “any protocol, including L1s, bridges, oracles, and even emerging verticals like artificial intelligence or zero-knowledge systems, to configure their own validator sets, incentive mechanisms and slashing conditions without having to rebuild core infrastructure,” Putiatin said.

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Crypto needs more collaborative economic incentives: Hoskinson

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, speaking at Paris Blockchain Week 2025, emphasized the need for collaborative economics in the crypto industry to counter growing competition from traditional tech firms entering the blockchain space.

Crypto’s “circular economy,” which often means that the rally of a specific cryptocurrency is bolstered by funds exiting another token, is limiting the growth of the industry, said Hoskinson.

“The problem right now, with the way we’ve done things in the cryptocurrency space, is the tokenomics and the market structure are intrinsically adversarial. It’s sum 0,” said Hoskinson. “Instead of picking a fight, what you have to do is you have to find tokenomics and market structure that allows you to be in a cooperative equilibrium.”

“You can’t build a global ecosystem this way, and you can’t win this way,” he said. “Because here’s the thing. The incumbents are much larger.”

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