Symbiotic Raises $29M to Transform Blockchain Coordination

Berlin-based Blockchain infrastructure company Symbiotic has secured $29 million in Series A funding to advance its "Universal Staking" vision – a comprehensive coordination layer designed to transform how blockchains implement security and achieve economic alignment.

According to the company's press release, the funding round was led by Pantera Capital with participation from Coinbase Ventures and over 100 angel investors from leading teams including Aave, Polygon, and StarkWare.

Universal Staking expands beyond traditional restaking concepts by establishing a modular framework for cryptoeconomic coordination. While restaking allowed assets to secure multiple networks simultaneously, Universal Staking creates a foundation for entirely new forms of blockchain collaboration.

The funding will accelerate Symbiotic's growth across three key areas: expanding their core team, building enhanced SDKs and tooling for network integrations, and extending functionality across slashing mechanisms and risk modeling to enable new economic primitives.

Symbiotic deployed feature-complete core contracts on Ethereum mainnet in January 2025, establishing the first shared security system with customizable slashing capabilities. The platform currently has 14 networks live with over 35 in various integration stages.

The flexible framework allows protocols to evolve without sacrificing sovereignty. Projects can implement any combination of assets to secure their networks while supporting use cases beyond traditional staking. Notable implementations include Hyperlane, which is using Symbiotic vaults for cross-chain messaging security, and Spark, which is leveraging the customizable framework to scale network participation.

Universal Staking provides adaptability throughout a network's lifecycle – from bootstrapping with established assets to implementing native token staking – all without rebuilding infrastructure.