Symbiotic Introduces External Rewards to Enhance Shared Security Across Blockchains

Symbiotic, a universal staking protocol positioning itself as an EigenLayer competitor, has launched External Rewards—a feature enabling networks to offer token-based incentives directly to stakers and node operators. The move, announced Wednesday, accelerates Symbiotic's vision of making shared security a standard for modular blockchain ecosystems.

Protocols can now distribute native tokens or points through Symbiotic's platform, layering these rewards atop the protocol's existing economic coordination mechanism, Symbiotic Points. This unified interface aims to simplify capital attraction and incentive modeling for networks while giving participants full visibility into their cross-chain economic activity. Hyperlane, an interoperability protocol, has already adopted the feature, rewarding stakers securing its Warp Routes with $HYPER tokens.

"Shared security is something we've been steadily building toward," said Symbiotic co-founder Misha Putiatin. The launch underscores the protocol's strategy of compounding infrastructure primitives to create a foundation for broader ecosystem development.