EtherFi continues to steer the nascent liquid restaking sector however faces rising competitors from an rising cohort of rivals
The surging recognition of EigenLayer, the pioneering Ethereum restaking protocol, is giving rise to an rising liquid restaking sector.
EtherFi, the main liquid staking protocol providing native restaking yields through EigenLayer, has grown 630% since Nov. 8, at present boasting a complete worth locked of $216M, in accordance with DeFi Llama. The protocol has loved sizable inflows for the reason that begin of January, with customers depositing almost $110M to EigenLayer in two-and-a-half weeks.
EtherFi revealed an up to date roadmap on Jan. 9, with the mission planning a token era occasion for April because it plans to decentralize governance. “Our day one mission was to be essentially the most decentralized, Ethereum-aligned, non-custodial staking protocol,” the staff tweeted.
EtherFi mentioned it is going to publish tokenomics documentation in March, deploy its v3 iteration on mainnet in early Q2, and start rolling out throughout Layer 2s — beginning with Polygon — within the coming months. Its eETH token is slated for integrations with Pendle, Aura, Morpho, and Silo, amongst different third-party DeFi protocols between now and April as nicely.
EigenLayer’s meteoric rise
EigenLayer permits Ethereum stakers to earn extra yields by securing third-party modules whereas concurrently validating the Ethereum community. The protocol has not too long ago loved explosive development, with its TVL exploding greater than 550% from $252M on Dec. 18 to $1.65B right now.
The protocol helps each native restaking from Ethereum validators and capped deposits within the type of liquid staking tokens (LSTs) equivalent to Lido’s stETH and Rocketpool’s rETH. EigenLayer’s current development was propelled by it growing the boundaries on LST deposits from 120,000 ETH to 500,000 ETH alongside onboarding six new LSTs.
On Jan. 10, EigenLayer introduced it is going to onboard three new LSTs with a cap of 200,000 ETH every on Jan. 29, setting the stage for its TVL to develop by a further $1.53B primarily based on present Ether costs.
Liquid restaking
EtherFi turned the primary LST protocol to supply yields through native restaking on EigenLayer, inspiring a rising section of liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) constructing on prime of EigenLayer.
On Jan. 16, Frax, the protocol behind the sfrxETH LST — which EigenLayer will assist from Jan. 29 — introduced its debut LRT integration with Kelp DAO. Kelp’s sfrxETH pool will launch with a cap of 30,000 ETH alongside a pool for Stader’s ETHx LST with a restrict of 75,000 ETH.
Kelp DAO at present boasts a TVL of $170.3M since launching in December, in accordance with its web site.
On the identical day, the nascent LRT protocol Renzo introduced the completion of a $3.2M seed spherical from a number of outstanding crypto enterprise capital corporations. On the identical day, Renzo celebrated its TVL surpassing $75M, with the protocol receiving 30,000 ETH in deposits one month after launching.
Rio Community additionally introduced the competitors of a seed spherical led by Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital on Dec. 18 forward of its personal entrance into the LRT sector.
