Co-founder of Symbiosis Finance: We are creating cross-chain communication standards

In October, the Symbiosis Finance cross-swap agreement attracted $2 million in investment from Blockchain.com Ventures, Priority Ventures, Avalanche and other companies.

and OKEx，Bybitand Gate.iotrade on.

Last December, we worked with Symbiosis FinanceCo-founder and CMO Nick Avramov talks. He talked about the project team, the features of Symbiosis Finance cross-chain swaps, and the upcoming protocol.

Question：Hello Nick! Tell us about yourself. How did you get into the crypto industry?

Nick Avramov:Hi! In 2016, I completed a master's degree at the Graduate School of Management of St Petersburg University. My teacher suggested that I write a master's thesis on blockchain.

I remember starting to understand how elliptic curve based cryptography works when I first read the Bitcoin white paper. I later published a section onMediummaster's thesis.

In 2017, I was working for a company that arbitrates Facebook and Google traffic. This year is the year of the ICO. I started looking for blockchain marketing projects and joined one as a community manager.

After a few months, I realized that the crypto industry is more interesting than advertising, so I completely immersed myself in this field: I participated in the roadshow of several cryptocurrency projects in China, and I also worked at the venture capital company Digital Horizon Foundation.

Question：When and how did the idea of ​​Symbiosis Finance come about?

Nick Avramov:In September 2020, although we didn't have a name at the time, we just investigated the problem of decentralized liquidity in the blockchain. In January 2021, we started working on the project's codebase, and in the summer we started looking for investors.

Question: How did you get early support from Blockchain Network and other major market players?

Nick Avramov:We took the classic adventure route. In June 2021, we started writing cold emails on LinkedIn, giving presentations, showing investors warehouse and project development plans. They did what they were taught in business school.

Blockchain has played an important role in attracting investment. We had some positive responses, but the decisive ones were the support of Peter Smith and Sam Harrison. For that, we are very grateful to them.

Question: Who is behind the word "we"? Can you tell us about the Symbiosis Finance team?

Nick Avramov:The team is really good. The protocol’s lead developers have known each other for almost five years. This includes people from Zerion and many other projects.

The former team leader of Yandex and Japanese conglomerate Rakuten is in charge of security. The head of the Relay Network development team previously led open source projects at IBM Russia.

Question: What are you doing now?

Nick Avramov:The immediate priority is to launch the mainnet in January 2022. We recently released our mobile SDK and we will be piloting wallet integration in the near future.

Question: How is Symbiosis Finance different from the ThorChain protocol?

Nick Avramov:Unlike ThorChain, we use the classic AMM mining pool model. In the case of ThorChain — RUNE, this approach eliminates the need to stake native tokens.Symbiosis FinanceLiquidity providers independently assess the volatility risk of the currency pairs in the pool.

We focus on transferring tokens within the growing network of the DeFi ecosystem, while ThorChain focuses on transferring native blockchain tokens.

Question: Does Symbiosis Finance work with EVM-incompatible blockchains?

Nick Avramov:The protocol supports blockchains with smart contracts that allow you to generate EDDSA/ECDSA keys, such as Solana and Near. The complexity of integration depends on the virtual machine of such blockchains.

A network like Bitcoin cannot follow AMM logic. However, if they support time-locked hash contracts (HTLC), Symbiosis Finance creates a cross-chain bridge to exchange native assets.

Question: Tell us the details of the protocol liquidity pool.

Nick Avramov:Symbiosis Finance uses Slate library pools: BUSD and USDC in the swap between PancakeSwap and Uniswap.

The protocol is looking for the most profitable way to trade on decentralized exchanges - with the help of 1-inch liquidity aggregators on the EVM network and its own blockchain solutions that do not support EVM.

With this method, you don't need to install special software. The exchange can be completed with one click through MetaMask.

Question: How do you solve the problem of exchange imbalance, which causes the balance of one asset to increase and the balance of another asset to decrease in a network?

Nik Avramov:We are rebalancing pools and encouraging arbitrage specialists to adjust prices when demand for a trade direction is high.

For example, if users frequently swap Tether from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain, arbitrage practitioners will do the opposite for the premium.

Question: Tell us about the relay network. How do i run node in it?

Nick Avramov:This is a separate network whose nodes track events in the blockchain and then sign and send Symbiosis Finance user transactions.

We will start it in several stages. In an early release, there will be 15 nodes synchronized using smart contracts on the Ethereum network. Then, we will gradually increase the number of nodes and transfer the logic of the relay network to the sidechain.

Staking of SIS tokens is required to run a node. The amount of collateral depends on the shares of other participants, but cannot be lower than 50 000 SIS.

Question: Are you going to control the protocol under the control of the DAO?

Nick Avramov:Yes, but not now: such a transition would complicate the decision-making process for updating the protocol. This is our long-term goal.

Everything has a price, including decentralization. Currently, Symbiosis Finance has to grow and develop quickly: the market is very active and competition is increasing.

Question: How do you see the future of Symbiosis Finance?

Nick Avramov:we wantSymbiosis FinanceBecome the standard for cross-chain communication. We can say that this is the cherished dream of our team.

I hope that in the future, third-party projects will use our development and create other services under the agreement.