Cooperation is the blood of Web3, and it brings lots of good projects to life! Rubic and Symbiosis represent a true example of partnership, where synergies drive great solutions.
From September 26th to October 30th, we’ll be conducting Rubic’s Anniversary NFT giveaway, where every week is dedicated to a specific Rubic provider. This week, September 26th to October 3rd, is the week of Symbiosis — our beloved partner. Swapping via Symbiosis at https://symbiosis.rubic.exchange/, you get our joint NFTs, which can be a key to future benefits and airdrops.
You can find the details of this promotion at https://cryptorubic.medium.com/nft-giveaway-to-celebrate-rubics-birthday-194947607f9f.
Let’s take an in-depth look at how Symbiosis is powering the cross-chain space and what role it plays in the Rubic ecosystem.
Symbiosis in the Rubic’s Family
Symbiosis was integrated into Rubic in July 2022, and it constitutes a very important part of the Rubic ecosystem. Since then, Rubic has generated more than $3.4M of cross-chain swap volume to Symbiosis. It’s great that our users trust Symbiosis, who are leading in the number of transactions in Ethereum and BNB Chain versus other Rubic providers.
Symbiosis helps Rubic to conduct secure, fast, and profitable transactions for its users as well as for the integrators of Rubic’s cross-chain tools (SDK/Widget).
What is Symbiosis?
Symbiosis Finance is a multi-chain liquidity protocol that aggregates decentralized exchange liquidity across all EVM and some non-EVM networks.
Symbiosis aims at solving a twofold problem: liquidity fragmentation across different blockchain networks, and poor user experience while working with the DeFi and Web3 economies. Symbiosis simplifies the time-consuming process of finding a suitable cross-chain bridge. Users can make swaps with a single click — regardless of the network they’re on.
The SIS token is used as a governance token of the Symbiosis DAO and Treasury. On top of that, relayer network nodes can stake SIS to participate in consensus and process swaps. SIS tokens will also be a part of Rubic’s partner airdrop program (with Anniversary NFTs participating).
Seamless Cross-Chain Interoperability for Web3
The Symbiosis protocol acts as a cross-chain AMM DEX and interchain communication protocol, while meeting the following requirements:
- Simple, Uniswap-like user experience
Symbiosis allows for swapping any tokens across EVM and non-EVM chains in one click. No additional wallets, extra time, or steps are needed. - Interchain communicating
Users can provide liquidity to lending and farming protocols, or buy an NFT on another blockchain. - Fully decentralized
No central party can stop the Symbiosis protocol or censor users from accessing it. - Interoperable
The protocol connects every blockchain that gets enough market attention. The ultimate goal of Symbiosis is to bridge all blockchains together. - Non-custodial
No one (including the Symbiosis team) has access to users’ funds. - Limitless cross-chain liquidity
The protocol targets as many token pairs as possible across all blockchains, while providing the best prices for swaps between any token pair.
What’s Behind the Curtains?
- The front-end is a web interface or mobile application. It collects information about assets on the blockchains supported by the Symbiosis protocol, builds optimal routes for swaps, and helps users to sign and send transactions to blockchains.
- The cross-chain liquidity engine is a set of smart contracts deployed on every blockchain supported by the Symbiosis protocol. It operates concentrated cross-chain liquidity pools and off-chain routing mechanisms, allowing it to tap into AMM liquidity across all blockchains.
- The relayer network is a P2P node network of decentralized custodians. The relayers listen to events emitted by the cross-chain liquidity engine on every supported blockchain, reach a consensus on each event, then sign and send transactions to appropriate blockchains.
Cross-Chain and On-Chain Communication
The Symbiosis protocol uses sTokens (a type of wrapped token) to do cross-chain operations.
Wrapped tokens are widely used to:
- Exchange one asset for another within one blockchain
- Bridge blockchains to make cross-chain operations possible
A wrapped token is a representation of one token through another: the original asset is locked in a special smart contract on the blockchain where this asset exists. The wrapped version can be 1) minted on the same blockchain and/or 2) mined on another one. The first type is used to handle operations with a native cryptocurrency.
The Symbiosis protocol uses both types of wrapped tokens, and for cross-chain operations (cross-chain swaps, interchain communicating, cross-chain zapping, bridging), Symbiosis uses a wrapped token mined on another blockchain which is called sToken (Synthetic Token), e.g. sUSDT, sBUSD etc..
By design, the Symbiosis protocol ensures that each wrapped token and sToken is backed at a 1:1 ratio by the original asset locked in a special smart contract.
For example, each sUSDC is backed by the original USDC on Ethereum, and that USDC is locked in a special Symbiosis smart contract (Scheme 1).
- Symbiosis chooses a stablecoin on each blockchain supported by its protocol.
- For each blockchain pair, sTokens are processed on the blockchain with minimal gas fees.
For example, in the case of Ethereum — Binance Smart Chain:
- USDC is chosen on Ethereum and BUSD on Binance Smart Chain
- sUSDC is minted on Binance Smart Chain
- There is no sBUSD on Ethereum
Supported Blockchains
Let’s have a look at a graph showing how blockchains supported by the Symbiosis protocol interconnect with one another:
- A node on the graphs is a supported blockchain
- A link between two nodes means that direct cross-chain swaps are supported for this pair
- Ethereum
- Binance Smart Chain (BSC)
- Polygon
- Avalanche
- Boba
- Telos
- Aurora
Wrapped Tokens and End Users
In fact, sTokens are only used for technical purposes. The end users cannot trade sTokens, though they have options on how to make a profit with them:
- Become liquidity providers and add sTokens to liquidity pools owned by Symbiosis
- Exchange sTokens for stablecoins on liquidity pools owned by Symbiosis
How Does Symbiosis Handle Cross-Chain Swaps?
The Symbiosis protocol was designed for cross-chain operations, and in the beginning, it carried out cross-chain swaps and bridging. New functions added to the protocol later enabled interchain communicating and cross-chain swaps.
There are two cases for doing cross-chain swaps:
Case 1: A cross-chain swap from a blockchain with a high gas fee to a blockchain with a lower gas fee.
Case 2: A cross-chain swap from a blockchain with a lower gas fee to a blockchain with a high gas fee.
Case 1: UNI (Ethereum) -> CAKE (BNB)
Let’s consider an example of a cross-chain swap from a blockchain with a high gas fee to a blockchain with a lower gas fee.
A user wants to swap: UNI ERC20 tokens on Ethereum for CAKE BEP20 tokens on Binance Smart Chain (BNB). The route of UNI to CAKE looks like this: UNI → USDC → sUSDC → BUSD → CAKE
The algorithm of this cross-chain swap is shown in the graph.
The scheme shows how everything works step-by-step.
- The user signs and sends transaction containing instructions for the Symbiosis protocol.
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps UNI for USDC with the 1inch protocol, which guarantees the best price, on behalf of the user.
- The Symbiosis protocol locks the USDC in one of its smart contracts: Portal.
- As soon as the tokens are locked on Portal, another Symbiosis smart contract, BridgeV2, issues an event which informs listeners that there is a request for a cross-chain swap.
- The relayers reach a consensus for this particular event, then sign and send a transaction to the destination blockchain (Binance Smart Chain in this case). More information on the relayers is here:
- The Synthesis protocol on BNB receives information about the swap, and mints sUSDC tokens at a ratio of 1:1 to the USDCc deposited on Ethereum (Step 3).
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the sUSDC for BUSD on behalf of the user, in a liquidity pool owned by Symbiosis.
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the BUSD for CAKE on behalf of the user, with the 1inch protocol, which guarantees the best price.
- As soon as the swap of BUSD → CAKE is accomplished, the CAKE gets deposited to the user’s address on BNB.
It’s important that through all these steps, the only owner of the swapping assets is the user. The user allows the system to execute these swaps on their behalf, via the Symbiosis protocol, by signing the transaction in Step 1.
Case 2: CAKE (BNB) -> UNI (Ethereum)
Another example of a cross-chain swap is one that is conducted from a blockchain with a lower gas fee to a blockchain with a high gas fee.
Let’s say that a user wants to swap CAKE BEP20 tokens on Binance Smart Chain for UNI ERC20 tokens on Ethereum. The route of CAKE to UNI looks like this: CAKE → BUSD → sUSDC → USDC → UNI
The algorithm of this cross-chain swap is shown in the graph below.
- The user signs and sends transactions containing instructions for the Symbiosis protocol.
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the CAKE for BUSD on behalf of the user, with the 1inch protocol, which guarantees the best price.
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the BUSD for sUSDC tokens on behalf of the user, in a liquidity pool owned by Symbiosis.
- The Symbiosis contract burns the sUSDC.
- As soon as the tokens are burnt, smart contract BridgeV2 on BNB issues an event, informing listeners that there is a request for a cross-chain swap.
- The relayers reach a consensus for this particular event, then sign and send a transaction to the destination blockchain (Ethereum, in this case).
- The Synthesis protocol on Ethereum receives information about the swap and releases USDC at a ratio of 1:1, to the sUSDC burnt in Step 4.
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the USDC for UNI on behalf of the user, with the 1inch protocol, which guarantees the best price.
- As soon as the swap of USDC → UNI is accomplished, the UNI gets deposited to the user’s address on Ethereum.
What are Cross-Chain Zaps?
Symbiosis owns liquidity pools with {stablecoin <> sToken} pairs to perform cross-chain swaps. Cross-chain Zaps have been implemented to facilitate supplying liquidity to these liquidity pools, from blockchains supported by Symbiosis. Graph 3 illustrates an example of the cross-chain Zap routine.
Zaps are used to add liquidity to liquidity pools or DeFi protocols. Zaps are processed by smart contracts that implement Zap protocol functionality and can contain a few on-chain operations packed in one transaction.
Without Zaps: While adding tokens to a liquidity pool, users can only add tokens of the type contained in the pool (Graph 1).
If the user has another type of token (e.g. BNB), the user should swap BNB for DOGE and/or CAKE first on DEXs of the user’s choice, and only then add tokens to the liquidity pool.
With Zaps: While adding tokens to a liquidity pool, users can send any token. The origin token will be swapped to a needed one and added to a liquidity pool on behalf of the user (Graph 2).
Cross-chain zaps automate liquidity supplying to the Symbiosis liquidity pools, DeFi protocols, NFTs, etc.
Symbiosis as an Interchain Communication Protocol
One more thing is that with Symbiosis, users can supply liquidity to other DeFi protocols — cross-chain and in one transaction. In this scenario, Symbiosis acts as an Interchain Communication Protocol.
Let’s consider one example to see how it works: a user has UNIs on Ethereum and wants to add BNBs to C.R.E.A.M. on Binance (the same scheme is used to add liquidity to other protocols).
Symbiosis acts as the Interchain Communication Protocol exchanging tokens for BTCs as well. Symbiosis uses the Ren protocol on Binance and Polygon to perform cross-chain exchanges for BTC. When the Ren protocol receives renBTC, it burns them and sends BTC to the user’s address on Bitcoin Blockchain.
Let’s consider one more example to see the process in detail: a user has UNI on Ethereum and wants to swap it for BTC).
- The user signs and sends transactions containing instructions for the Symbiosis protocol.
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the token sent by the user, for the stablecoin used to operate on this blockchain (for USDC, in the example).
- The Symbiosis protocol locks the USDC in one of its smart contracts: Portal.
- As soon as the tokens are locked on Portal, another Symbiosis smart contract, BridgeV2, issues an event informing listeners that there is a request for cross-chain swapping.
- The relayers reach a consensus for this particular event, then sign and send a transaction to the destination blockchain (Binance Smart Chain in this case).
- The Synthesis protocol on BNB receives information about the swap for BTC, and mints sUSDC tokens at a ratio of 1:1 to the USDCc deposited on Ethereum (Step 3).
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the sUSDC for BUSD on behalf of the user, in the liquidity pool dedicated for this pair of blockchains and owned by Symbiosis.
- The Symbiosis protocol swaps the BUSD for renBTC.
- The Symbiosis protocol sends the renBTC to the Ren protocol.
- The Ren protocol performs on-chain and off-chain logic that includes burning the renBTC and sending a transaction to the Bitcoin blockchain. As a result, the user gets BTC on the Bitcoin Blockchain.
Future plans
Symbiosis is a project that never stands still, following the market trends and needs. Being a cross-chain AMM DEX and interchain communication protocol in one place, Symbiosis:
- Allows users to make cross-chain swaps to any token between EVM and non-EVM chains in one click.
- Delivers a one-click experience in providing liquidity to lending and farming protocols, or buying NFTs on other blockchains.
On top of that, all of us are waiting for a great update — the launch of Symbiosis protocol V2, the successor of the first version, which is coming soon. It will accumulate the main effective and reliable features of the current Symbiosis protocol V1, and makes swapping on app.rubic.exchange even better!
Rubic believes that by unifying strengths and advantages, we can contribute to the faster development and mass adoption of the future omni-chain blockchain world, and aim to further build and improve cross-chain functionality with Symbiosis.
You can stay updated about Symbiosis and its community through the following:
About Rubic
Rubic is a One-Click Cross-Chain Aggregator which allows users to swap any of 15,500+ tokens, on and between 18 blockchains, and receive the best rates from all leading trading providers. Rubic includes On-Chain & Cross-Chain swaps for Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Arbitrum, Gnosis, Fuse, Celo, Optimism, Moonbeam, OKC, Boba, Tron, Moonriver, Cronos, and Bitcoin; with seamless fiat on-ramps and more!
Rubic provides the tools for crypto projects to become fully interoperable between blockchains, with an easy-to-install widget and a fully customizable SDK. Rubic is already servicing more than 90 projects! Installation of Rubic’s SDK or Widget unlocks DeFi for any project, with access to over 15,500+ tokens across 18 blockchains, all available right on your website or inside your app.
