We are thrilled to announce our research partnership with Catalysis, a protocol introducing a novel security abstraction layer for decentralized networks. The collaboration will focus on the economic and security implications of Catalysis’ pioneering Shared Security Abstraction layer.

What is Catalysis?

Catalysis is building the first Security Abstraction Layer designed to standardize and unify economic security across multiple shared security protocols—including EigenLayer, Symbiotic, and SatLayer.

By abstracting the complexities of integrating with individual restaking ecosystems, Catalysis provides a unified framework for developers and node operators to deploy and manage decentralized systems such as AVSs (Actively Validated Services), BSNs (Bitcoin Secured Networks), or BVSs (Bitcoin Validated Services)—or Shared Security Networks (SSNs) in short.

Utility of Catalysis

Shared security is rapidly transforming decentralized infrastructure, but the operational burden of launching and maintaining SSNs remains significant. Catalysis addresses these challenges through:

• Cross-Ecosystem Security: Seamless integration with restaking protocols across Ethereum, Bitcoin (via Babylon), Solana, and others;

• Accelerated Deployment: Developer-friendly SDKs and streamlined documentation reduce SSN time-to-market by an estimated 80%;

• Aggregated Economic Security: Access to over $20B in restaked collateral across multiple protocols, enhancing security guarantees;

• Programmable Security Rebalancing: Real-time control over the allocation and reallocation of security via a single, unified interface.

• Infrastructure Resilience: Diversified security provisioning across shared security protocols improves fault tolerance and systemic robustness, especially for SSNs.

Motivation for Collaboration

Catalysis introduces a new layer of modularity and flexibility to the shared security stack, but also surfaces complex economic and operational risk vectors. Our research will focus on:

• Operator Exposure: Analyzing how node operators manage risk under multi-AVS commitments;

• Cascading Slashing Risk: Assessing how faults in one protocol may propagate through shared security dependencies;

• Security Layer Composability: Studying how programmable security abstraction interacts with incentive structures to maintain system-wide safety.

Our analysis will draw on game-theoretic models to understand strategic behavior across protocols, SSNs, and operators, structured risk frameworks to identify and classify systemic vulnerabilities and quantitative economic methods to model capital allocation, incentive dynamics and security guarantees under varying network conditions.

Next Steps

We will be publishing a technical article series based on this research, offering a structured view into how programmable security abstraction reshapes shared security coordination, protocol design and risk allocation.

This collaboration aims to support a deeper understanding of Catalysis’ architecture and its broader role in the evolving decentralized security landscape.

Stay tuned for new developments from our partnership with Catalysis!

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Catalysis References:

1. Website: https://catalysis.network

2. Documentation: https://docs.catalysis.network

3. Twitter: https://x.com/0xcatalysis