Wu’s Weekly Selection: US CPI Dips, Pension Funds Invest in Bitcoin ETF, Lido and Paradigm Introduce EigenLayer Competitor, and News Top10

According to insiders, Lido co-founder and Paradigm are secretly funding a new company called Symbiotic, which will compete in the restaking arena. Paradigm is also an investor in Lido. Internal Symbiotic documents obtained by CoinDesk allow users to restake Lido’s stETH with other popular assets that are not natively compatible with the Eigen Layer. Symbiotic is developed by the team behind the former Stakemind staking service. Several teams working in the emerging restaking ecosystem have reportedly been discussing integration with Symbiotic, including AVSs and liquidity restaking services built on the Eigen Layer. The main difference between Symbiotic and Eigen Layer is that users will be able to directly deposit any Ethereum-based ERC-20 token into Symbiotic. Sources say that when Paradigm approached Eigen Layer co-founder Sreeram Kannan for investment, Kannan rejected them and chose a16z instead. Paradigm then informed Kannan that they would invest in their competitor.