Written by: Fairy, ChainCatcher
Edited by: TB, ChainCatcher
In the first half of 2024, the concept of secondary returns ignited market excitement, and 're-staking' briefly became the core topic sweeping the crypto ecosystem. EigenLayer rose, and projects like Ether.fi and Renzo emerged one after another, with re-staking tokens (LRT) blooming everywhere.
However, both leading projects in the track have chosen to transform:
Ether.fi announced its transformation into a new type of crypto bank (neobank), planning to launch cash cards and staking services aimed at U.S. users;
Eigen Labs announced layoffs of about 25%, reorganizing resources to fully focus on the new product EigenCloud.
Once a hot topic, 're-staking' now faces a turning point. Do the strategic adjustments of the two major players indicate that this track is heading towards obsolescence?
Emergence, Trends and Clearance
In recent years, the re-staking track has undergone a cycle of moving from conceptual experimentation to intensive capital inflow.
According to RootData, there are currently over 70 projects that have emerged in the re-staking track. EigenLayer, as part of the Ethereum ecosystem, is the first project to bring the ReStaking model to market, spurring a collective explosion of liquidity re-staking protocols such as Ether.fi, Renzo, and Kelp DAO. Subsequently, new architecture projects like Symbiotic and Karak also made their debut.
In 2024, financing events surged to 27, raising nearly $230 million throughout the year, becoming one of the hottest tracks in the crypto market. As we enter 2025, the pace of financing begins to slow down, and the overall heat of the track gradually cools down.
Meanwhile, the reshuffling of the track is accelerating. Currently, 11 projects including Moebius Finance, goTAO, and FortLayer have ceased operations, gradually clearing early-stage bubbles.
Currently, EigenLayer remains the dominant player in the track, with a TVL of approximately $14.2 billion, capturing over 63% of the market share in the entire industry. Within its ecosystem, Ether.fi accounts for about 75%, while Kelp DAO and Renzo account for 12% and 8.5%, respectively.
Narrative weightlessness: Cooling signals behind the data
As of now, the total TVL of re-staking protocols is about $22.4 billion, a decrease of 22.7% compared to the historical peak of approximately $29 billion in December 2024. Although the overall locked amount remains high, signs of slowing growth momentum in re-staking have emerged.
Source: Defillama
The decline in user activity is even more significant. According to The Block data, the number of daily active deposit users for Ethereum liquidity re-staking has plummeted from a peak of over a thousand in July 2024 to currently just over thirty, while the number of daily independent deposit addresses for EigenLayer has even dropped to single digits.
Source: The Block
From the validator's perspective, the attractiveness of re-staking is also diminishing. Currently, the number of daily active re-staking validators on Ethereum is less than 3% compared to regular staking validators.
Additionally, the token prices of projects such as Ether.fi, EigenLayer, and Puffer have all corrected by over 70% from their highs. Overall, although the re-staking track still maintains a certain scale, user activity and participation enthusiasm have significantly decreased, and the ecosystem is in a state of 'weightlessness.' The narrative-driven effect has weakened, and the growth of the track has entered a bottleneck period.
Leading projects transforming: Is re-staking business no longer viable?
As the 'airdrop period bonuses' fade and the track's heat dissipates, the expected return curve tends to smooth out, and re-staking projects have begun to face the question: How can the platform achieve long-term growth?
Taking Ether.fi as an example, it achieved over $3.5 million in revenue for two consecutive months by the end of 2024. By April 2025, revenue fell back to $2.4 million. In the reality of slowing growth momentum, a single re-staking function may struggle to support a complete business story.
It was also in April that Ether.fi began to expand its product boundaries, transforming into a 'new type of crypto bank,' creating a closed-loop of financial operations through real-world scenarios such as 'bill payments, salary disbursements, savings, and consumption.' The dual-track combination of 'cash card + re-staking' has become its new engine to activate user stickiness and retention.
Unlike Ether.fi's 'application layer breakthrough,' EigenLayer has opted for a reconstruction strategy that leans more towards the infrastructure level.
On July 9, Eigen Labs announced layoffs of about 25% and will concentrate resources on the new product developer platform EigenCloud, which has also attracted a new round of $70 million investment from a16z. EigenCloud integrates EigenDA, EigenVerify, and EigenCompute, aiming to provide a universal trust infrastructure for on-chain and off-chain applications.
The transformations of Ether.fi and EigenLayer, though differing in paths, essentially point to two solutions of the same logic: to turn 're-staking' from an endpoint narrative into a 'starting module,' transforming it from an end goal into a means of building more complex application systems.
Re-staking is not dead, but its 'single-thread growth model' may be hard to continue. Only when it is embedded in a more scalable application narrative can it have the ability to continuously attract users and capital.
The mechanism design of the re-staking track igniting market enthusiasm with 'secondary returns' is now seeking new landing points and vitality in a more complex application landscape.
