A need that must be met:

When I first entered the cryptocurrency space a few years ago, I was told that I was going into a world of freedom, independence, and anonymity. There are no limits, no censorship, and most importantly, no central entity to impose temperamental rules on others. I'm pretty sure that everyone reading was told the same thing as I was. After all, these are the ideals that our "father" Satoshi Nakamoto tried to offer by inventing Bitcoin in 2009, and these are what make us describe crypto as a revolution. But alas, after spending those years in cryptocurrency, I can say that things are not even close to such virtues…
What we see in cryptocurrencies nowadays is a handful of centralized exchanges, each with its own rules and limits, monopolizing over 80% of cryptocurrency trading. These exchanges are heavily regulated by authorities and must follow strict laws imposed by the governments. Once you want to engage with one of those exchanges (eg Binance, Kucoin, Coinbase...etc), you have to be bound by their rules and terms. You have to give up your personal data, provide KYC documents, an IP address, and in some cases, you even have to hand over your home address! There are also withdrawal limits and high trading/withdrawal fees that you must pay every time you want to conduct a trade or withdraw your money. To top it all off, these exchanges are attractive targets for hackers, and if an exchange is hacked, nothing will guarantee that they will compensate you or just say “sorry we got hacked and we can’t get your money back”.
This is how crypto looks at present, quite the opposite of what it was meant to be.
In an effort to put an end to this broken landscape, many decentralized exchanges (DEXs) started to emerge and develop. Ones like Uniswap, Sushiswap, and Pancakeswap have managed to pull huge attention for the last two years, and while I was impressed by the decentralized trading and being able to own the keys to my wallets, there was one problem those DEXs couldn't solve. Those DEXs don't support cross-chain trading!
So, If want to trade ETH or an ERC-20 token, I have to go to a DEX that is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. If I need to trade a BEP-20 token, I have to go to a DEX that is built on the Binance blockchain, and If it is a token built on Avalaunch, then I must go to a DEX built on the Avalaunch blockchain
This creates much confusion and complexity for a regular user and makes the entire trading experience ineffective and time-consuming.
So, it's quite clear we need an alternative that offers the crypto trading service transparently, safely, and limitless. It should also be supporting cross-chain transactions. This is exactly the need that Symbiosis came to meet...

What is Symbiosis all about?

In short, Symbiosis Finance is a non-custodial decentralized multi-chain exchange that makes it possible for users to perform any crypto token swaps across multiple blockchains with literally a single click. The team behind Symbiosis seems to be serious about their work and working at an excellent pace to improve the trading experience for the crypto community. So far, Symbiosis supports 4 leading networks which are Ethereum, Binance Chain, Polygon, and Avalanche. Plans to add more supported networks are already in the works.
There is no need anymore to run around the internet looking for a place to trade your coins. There is no need to sacrifice your personal data and privacy to get get "the right" of performing your trades. There is no need to put your trust in a centralized entity to be custodial of crypto and try to hope that it deserves it.
With Symbiosis, the only one you need to trust is yourself, and all you need is a wallet like Metamask and you are fully entitled to freely buy, sell and provide liquidity with your crypto while being the ONLY owner of it.
Always remember the golden rule of crypto "Not your keys not your coins", and if you ask me, I think that being the only owner of your keys (and thus your coins) is the mindset that all crypto enthusiasts should have.

How does Symbiosis work?

Now that we know what Symbiosis is and how important it is for the crypto community, I assume it will be helpful to understand how it works. I believe that deep knowledge is the best way to boost trust. That's why I dug a bit into the weeds to learn what is going on under the hood of the Symbiosis Finance system.
Before I start, let me mention that team has already explained the mechanism of the protocol on their official medium account. You can take a look from here, but in this post, maybe I can rephrase it with a bit simpler and clearer words.

Well...let's assume I want to swap a token built on the Binance chain (say Cake) with a token built on Ethereum (say UNI). As you see, these are two different tokens built on top of two different blockchains.
So, from a user perspective, the swap will be:
Cake >>> UNI
The trading process will go through the following steps:

1. Symbiosis takes the mission of asking every single swap aggregator on the Binance chain (in case of Binance, it might be PancakeSwap, Dodo...etc) for the most efficient way to swap Cake token for a stable coin asset on the Binance chain (BUSD)

2. Symbiosis swaps the stable coin on the Binance chain (BUSD) to the wrapped representation of a stable coin from the Ethereum chain. In this example, the protocol swaps BUSD with the wrapped USDT.

3. Symbiosis unwraps this wrapped stable coin to the original one of the Ethereum chain.

4. Symbiosis uses the routing again to find the best price for stablecoin to UNI token.

At this point, you might be wondering why Symbiosis chooses stablecoins in the middle of the swap? Well, the simple answer is that stablecoins usually have the most liquid pools which ensure smooth trading at the best price and the least slippage. Therefore, this will be to the benefit of the user.
The image below illustrates the step of the process. But let me state again that Symbiosis spares the user all the above-mentioned steps. All they need to do is a wallet and a few clicks!

SIS Token:

One of the nice parts of Symbiosis protocol is its own token. It is deployed on Ethereum with the purpose of allowing many users and investors to participate in the future of the project. It will be used as a governance token within Symbiosis protocol as well as for staking to run a node in the relayers' network.  And while it is available to trade on multiple DEXs like Uniswap, the team made a wise decision by listing the token on a number of high-profile CEXs as well. These are Gate.io,  BKEX, CoinEx, Huobi Global, OKX, and Bybit. I think it is a smart move to make the token accessible to the largest number of investors possible.
According to Coingecko, SIS token has a max supply of 100 million with a market cap of about $12 million. It is hovering around the $1.2 level which might make it an attractive opportunity for those who like to jump into promising projects early

My personal experience:

Since I decided to take part in this nice writing contest, I thought it was quite fitting to do a personal experiment with Symbiosis so I could tell you how I really feel about it rather than just throwing in some theoretical talks.
Well...for the sake of this post, I decided to swap BNB with Avalanche. Let's see how it goes... 

First, go to Symbiosis from here and then click on "Try App". You will be transferred to another page where you should click on "connect wallet" button to connect your wallet (in my case, I'm using Metamask)

After your wallet is connected ,  you can select the chain you want to send you tokens from (in my case, it is Binance chain), and then select the chain you want to send your tokens to (In my case, it is Avalanche chain).

By default, the recipient address will be the same as the sender, but you can of course change it if you want to transfer your coins to a different wallet. I want to swap 0.15  BNB which is equal to  about 0.62 WAVAX

As you can see, Symbiosis provides you with the essential info related to your transaction:

• Slippage tolerance: 1% which is quite acceptable 
• Route: WBNB>BUSD>sBUSD>USDC>WAVAX
• Transaction fee (the most important part):  is just 5 BUSD, and in my humble opinion, it is an extremely low fee given that I'm doing a transaction between two entirely different chains (big thumbs up to Symbiosis ) 👍

So, I'll hit that confirm button...

Another confirm button to allow my Metamask wallet to send the tokens...

Then, give it a few short seconds...

And boom! My transaction is successfully done!

Some pros of using Symbiosis:

1) Passive income by providing liquidity:

Decentralized exchanges are designed to be led and owned by the community. This applies to everything, especially the fair distribution of the profits. As known, whether you're trading on a centralized exchange or a decentralized exchange, you must pay a fee for making transactions. But the big difference is that in the case of centralized exchanges, profits are only to the owners, but in the case of decentralized exchanges, profits are distributed equitably among those who provide liquidity. This allows users to generate passive income simply by providing liquidity to the exchange.
Unfortunately, I don't currently have enough coins and tokens in my wallet to provide liquidity myself, but I found a good YouTube video that will walk you through the process in a simple and nice way_ Enjoy! 

And if you want something attractive, how about looking at those impressive returns? Yes, it is not a joke. You can earn over 200% APR on stablecoins with Symbiosis!
Can you find another place with such fascinating dividends? I don't think so

2) No KYC, No personal data:

This is yet another big difference between CEXs and DEXS. Most centralized exchanges force their users to submit their personal data and KYC documentation or else there're going to be limits on trading and withdrawing. While I understand this might be to reduce fraudulent and scam activities, I still cannot shake the feeling that these rules are imposed by governments and authorities to censor regular people too. After all, it flies on the face of the soul of crypto!
With Symbiosis, you no more have to go through all this bureaucratic stuff, all you need is a wallet and you are more than eligible to enjoy all features of Symbiosis

3) Easy to use:

From a technical standpoint, making transactions between different blockchains is quite a long and complicated process. However, if you look at Symbiosis, you can clearly see that the team behind it has done exceptionally well by making such complex process super easy, intuitive, and straightforward for an average user. No gimmicks, no complicated options.  A few clicks are all that it takes! This is great, and I believe it will help Symbiosis reach mass adoption in the near future.

4) No hidden fees:

When I first used Symbiosis for swapping, I expected the trading fee to be somewhere between $20-30. This is because I was doing a cross-chain transaction and knew how complicated it could be. But to my surprise, it was only $5. However, this wasn't even the nicest part...
What most impressed me with Symbiosis is that it had approximately calculated the fee even before I did the swap. This is impressive as I don't have to worry about how much fee I will be charged. It is already calculated and shown in front of me! Everything thing is transparent and above-board here!
Pro tip: If you find the fee a bit high, this could be due to network congestion (especially in the case of Ethereum). You can simply wait a little while to do your swap if you are not in a hurry.

5) A strong and committed team:

One of the reassuring things when using Symbiosis is that it has a strong and committed team behind it. Just take a look at their Twitter account or Telegram channel to see how active they are in making partnerships and connections to move the project forward. This gives real peace of mind as I'm getting involved in something that is here to not only survive but also thrive...

Conclusion:

For ages, the financial system has been dominated and controlled by governments and behemoth companies at the expense of regular people. This unfair landscape continued until crypto came to exist. Indeed, the most important purpose Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin for is to establish an equal financial world where everyone has access to the same rights regardless of who they are or where they live. However, when if look deep at the crypto space at present, we'll see that the same old broken scenario has revived itself. The very few centralized exchanges have effectively dominated the crypto world to their advantage. They undermined the soul of the decentralization concept and monopolized the lion's share of crypto activities.
That said, we now have a new product that seems to be putting us on the right track again. It enables us to practice crypto trading as it is really meant to be. Secure, safe, decentralized, and intermediary-free.
While centralized exchanges such as Binance, Kucoin...etc still have higher liquidity and support more options, I strongly believe we're going to reach a point where Decentralized exchanges prevail over the whole field.
Symbiosis has managed to bring an incredibly new thing to the table. For the first time in crypto history, we are able to do a multi-chain transaction with literally a single click. It is the missing link that we as a crypto community have been looking for, and I'm looking forward to the updates and developments it's going to offer in the future...

What do guys think about Symbiosis ? I'm keen to learn your opinions and thoughts...

Thanks for reading

Helpful links:

Official site: https://symbiosis.finance/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/symbiosis_fi
Telegram: https://t.me/symbiosis_finance
GitHub: https://github.com/symbiosis-finance
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/symbiosis
Blog: https://blog.symbiosis.finance/