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