Pantera Capital Leads $29 Million Funding Round for Symbiotic Network
The Symbiotic network has raised $29 million in a Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and over 100 angel investors. The funding aims to expand the team and develop its Universal Staking framework, moving beyond restaking to support various staking activities.
Key points include:
- Symbiotic allows any combination of assets to secure different types of networks.
- Restaking is a major DeFi trend, with total value locked (TVL) in restaking protocols around $14 billion.
- EigenLayer remains the leading restaking protocol despite a recent drop in TVL from $20 billion to slightly above $7 billion.
- Symbiotic launched in 2024, backed by Lido’s co-founders and Paradigm, with a current TVL of approximately $825 million.
- The protocol enables decentralized applications to collectively secure each other and supports deposits of all Ethereum ERC-20 tokens, unlike EigenLayer which only accepts ETH.
Symbiotic aims to change perceptions of the staking industry by providing infrastructure that accommodates new protocols seeking independent security solutions.