All Stake, No Substance
Description
Staking started out with PoS, a system that enabled Ethereum to flourish into the decentralized, secure ecosystem we see today. However, the term 'staking' is now overused and its meaning diluted, often with little to do with providing economic guarantees to protect builders and users.
It's time to reclaim the term and apply the principles of PoS universally to enable a maximally decentralized and secure protocols.
Universal Staking is how we plan to reclaim the meaning of staking, where Symbiotic provides a programmable and modular framework that lets any protocol, L2s, bridges, oracles, easily customize validator sets, incentives, and slashing logic without rebuilding from scratch.
In this talk, we’ll:
Recall the innovation that was 'Staking'
Unpack how 'Staking' has become diluted and often meaningless
Share how Symbiotic can bring Staking back to its roots, alongside an in-prod example of Hyperlane
Universal Staking is our response. It’s a new primitive that turns staking into a programmable coordination layer. Protocols can configure validator sets, slashing conditions, and incentive models without building their own staking infrastructure.
In this talk, we’ll:
Unpack why staking is broken in modular contexts
Share how protocols like Hyperlane and Omni are using Universal Staking live today
Explore how this can enable better public goods funding, validator diversity, and more trust-minimized infrastructure
ETH Prague is about public goods and decentralization. We believe staking should be too.