Applications

Applications are consumers of collateral and rely on vault capital for a variety of use cases, ranging from risk underwriting to economic security. They connect to Symbiotic vaults and use the allocated collateral to provide these guarantees.

Curators define how much capital is allocated to each application. In return for consuming the vault's collateral, applications are expected to pay rewards back to the vault, as the vault is effectively providing the economic guarantees that enable their operation.

Application's Interactions

Applications receive stake guarantees through App Adapters. An App Adapter is a contract that connects a Symbiotic vault to a specific application-operator pair. It receives collateral allocated by the vault, exposes that collateral as slashable economic security, tracks historical stake and delayed withdrawals, accepts reward payments from the application, and enforces slashing by transferring collateral to the configured burner when authorized by the application's middleware.

In other words, the App Adapter is the on-chain accounting and settlement layer that allows applications to consume vault collateral while preserving Symbiotic's security guarantees.

The application middleware interacts with the App Adapter whenever slashing is required.

Examples

Cap

Cap is an on-chain credit platform that provides USD loans backed by financial guarantees. Every loan is underwritten with escrowed collateral, ensuring lenders are protected against borrower defaults.

The protocol relies on a network of independent underwriters who originate and insure loans by committing their own capital to each credit decision. In return, underwriters earn premiums derived from credit spreads, while lenders receive secured yield backed by transparent, smart contract-enforced collateral guarantees.