Original Title: "EigenLayer and Ether.fi Both Transform, Is the Re-Staking Narrative Over?"
Original Author: Fairy, ChainCatcher
In the first half of 2024, the concept of secondary income stirred the market, and "re-staking" once 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 field have now 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%, restructuring resources to fully focus on the new product EigenCloud.
The once-hot "re-staking" now faces a turning point. Do the strategic adjustments of the two leaders indicate that this sector is heading towards obsolescence?
Emergence, Boom, and Cleanup
In the past few years, the re-staking sector has gone through a cycle from conceptual testing to a capital-intensive influx.
According to RootData, there are currently over 70 projects in the re-staking sector. EigenLayer, the first project to bring the ReStaking model to market within the Ethereum ecosystem, has spurred a collective explosion of liquidity re-staking protocols like Ether.fi, Renzo, and Kelp DAO. Subsequently, new architecture projects like Symbiotic and Karak have also emerged.
In 2024, financing events surged to 27, raising nearly $230 million throughout the year, making it one of the hottest sectors in the crypto market. As we enter 2025, the pace of financing has begun to slow, and the overall heat of the sector is gradually cooling.
At the same time, the reshuffling of the sector is accelerating. Currently, 11 projects, including Moebius Finance, goTAO, and FortLayer, have ceased operations, gradually clearing the early bubble.
At present, EigenLayer remains the dominant player in the sector, with a TVL of approximately $14.2 billion, capturing over 63% of the market share across the industry. Within its ecosystem, Ether.fi holds about 75% of the share, 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 approximately $22.4 billion, down 22.7% from the historical peak of about $29 billion in December 2024. Although the overall locked volume remains high, signs of slowing growth momentum in re-staking have begun to appear.
Image Source: Defillama
The decline in user activity is even more pronounced. According to The Block, the daily active deposit users for Ethereum liquidity re-staking have plummeted from a peak of over a thousand in July 2024 to just over thirty currently, while the number of daily unique deposit addresses for EigenLayer has even dropped to single digits.
Image Source: The Block
From the validator's perspective, the appeal of re-staking is also diminishing. Currently, the daily active re-staking validators on Ethereum account for less than 3% compared to regular staking validators.
Additionally, the token prices of projects like Ether.fi, EigenLayer, and Puffer have all retraced more than 70% from their highs. Overall, while the re-staking sector still retains a certain volume, user activity and participation enthusiasm have significantly declined, and the ecosystem is entering a state of "weightlessness." The narrative-driven effect is weakening, and the sector's growth has entered a bottleneck period.
Leading Projects Transform: Is the Re-Staking Business No Longer Viable?
As the "airdrop period bonuses" fade and the sector's heat dissipates, the expected yield curve tends to flatten, re-staking projects are beginning 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 at the end of 2024, but 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 narrative.
It was also in April that Ether.fi began to expand its product boundaries, transforming into a "new type of crypto bank" by building a closed loop of financial operations through real-world scenarios like "bill payments, payroll distribution, savings, and consumption." The dual-track combination of "cash card + re-staking" has become its new engine to activate user stickiness and retention.
In contrast to Ether.fi's "application layer breakthrough," EigenLayer has chosen a more infrastructure-oriented strategic restructuring.
On July 9, Eigen Labs announced layoffs of about 25% and concentrated resources on the new product developer platform EigenCloud, which subsequently attracted a new round of $70 million investment from a16z. EigenCloud integrates EigenDA, EigenVerify, and EigenCompute, attempting to provide a universal trust infrastructure for on-chain and off-chain applications.
The transformations of Ether.fi and EigenLayer, while differing in their paths, essentially point to two solutions of the same logic: to make "re-staking" transition from an endpoint narrative to a "starting module," transforming from an end in itself to 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 possess the ability to continuously attract users and capital.
The mechanism design that ignited market enthusiasm in the re-staking sector with "secondary income" is now seeking new points of landing and vitality within a more complex application landscape.
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