Author: CoinW Research Institute

Key Points

The essence of re-staking is to abstract the economic security of the underlying blockchain into a shareable resource, allowing multiple networks or modular infrastructures to share the security guarantees of the main chain without needing to build their own validation sets. This mechanism significantly reduces the reliance of new protocols on independent security mechanisms in the early stages, thereby accelerating cold starts and trust accumulation. Re-staking initially completed its concept validation and early deployment mainly within the Ethereum ecosystem, but as Ethereum is a single network, its reusable security resources have certain limitations. Therefore, more emerging projects are beginning to seek to break the constraints of single-chain structures on re-staking and explore new paths such as cross-chain validation.

Currently, the top three projects in the re-staking sector by total TVL are EigenCloud, deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, which leads with a locked value of approximately $13.86 billion; followed by Babylon, focused on the Bitcoin network, with a total TVL of $5.549 billion; and Symbiotic, also based on Ethereum, with a total TVL of $565 million, emphasizing a modular re-staking structure.

This report organizes the core participants in the re-staking sector along three main lines: infrastructure layer, yield aggregation layer, and active validation service layer. Although the infrastructure layer has built a security foundation worth tens of billions of dollars, it generally faces a bottleneck in TVL growth and is transforming towards diverse dimensions such as AI; the yield aggregation layer lowers the participation threshold for users and enhances capital efficiency, but it also lengthens the risk chain, making funds more dependent on market cycles and incentive structures; the active validation service layer, while absorbing a large amount of re-staked assets on paper, is still in the early validation stage regarding punitive constraints and commercial closure.

While the re-staking system improves capital efficiency and security supply, it also exposes a series of risks. The overall market demand for shared security is shrinking, with limited new space; the same staked asset is reused multiple times, which, while improving capital efficiency, also dilutes the security margin; validation resources are highly concentrated in a few leading platforms and nodes, increasing the risk factor; and there is a lack of a unified risk isolation and pricing mechanism within the re-staking system. At the same time, the exit cycle for underlying assets is relatively long, while the upper layer is highly liquid and layered with multiple sources of income, making the re-staking system more prone to amplifying risks during market fluctuations or trust damage.

The re-staking sector is currently undergoing a structural adjustment phase after the hype has receded, with power concentration, layered risks, and limited TVL growth becoming unavoidable constraints. Leading projects like EigenCloud are actively seeking change by introducing cross-border directions such as AI computing resources, reducing reliance on a single staking narrative, and attempting to reshape their positioning in the infrastructure layer.

Whether re-staking can complete its reconstruction may hinge on whether it can establish predictable and priceable security and yield benchmarks on-chain, and convert this security capability into a credit form that traditional capital can bear through compliance and RWA. If this condition cannot be met, its influence may struggle to expand into a broader financial system. Overall, the re-staking sector is attempting to break away from a single risk narrative and shift towards a more certain infrastructure role. Although this transformation faces dual challenges of technical complexity and regulatory uncertainty, its systematic reconstruction of the on-chain credit system will still be an important dimension to observe in the next stage of digital asset ecosystem development.

On the policy level, on-chain yield mechanisms have gained more attention, and although they have not yet become a regulatory mainline, their potential economic impact and structural innovation value are gradually entering the scope of compliance discussions. In April 2025, Paul Atkins was appointed as the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and during his early tenure, he led the initiation of the "DeFi and the American Spirit" series of roundtable discussions.

In the fifth meeting held on June 9, 2025, the regulatory body expressed a relatively open attitude towards DeFi for the first time. Meanwhile, the legislation of the GENUS Act established a clear and unified legal framework for the issuance, custody, and on-chain use of stablecoins. The overall regulatory attitude is becoming more rational and constructive, releasing positive policy signals for on-chain financial innovation. At the same time, in 2026, regulations will further relax, bringing more possibilities for DeFi.

Against this backdrop, the re-staking mechanism, as one of the development directions of the on-chain yield system, has also attracted market attention regarding its compliance and structural design. This mechanism provides additional security service support and yield compounding capabilities for protocols by reusing native staked assets without changing the underlying consensus logic.

This report believes that a systematic analysis of the current mainstream re-staking protocols will help clarify their positioning in the on-chain yield system, identify risk exposures in protocol structures, and provide an analytical basis for future capital efficiency optimization and cross-protocol collaboration. Below, this report will focus on an in-depth discussion of the leading protocols in the re-staking infrastructure layer, re-staking yield aggregation layer, and re-staking active validation service layer.

I. Development and Current Status of the Re-staking Sector

1. The Advancement of the Re-staking Sector

Staking, as a fundamental means of ensuring on-chain security under the PoS consensus mechanism, has undergone a multi-layered development from the initial native staking to liquid staking and then to re-staking. In the native staking phase, users directly lock their assets in the underlying consensus protocol in exchange for validator status and block rewards, ensuring network security, but this leads to low capital efficiency due to assets being completely locked, with staked assets lacking liquidity and composability, limiting their value release.

Subsequently, liquid staking (LSD) emerged, allowing users to obtain liquidity tokens such as stETH and rETH based on staked assets. These tokens can participate in DeFi ecosystem trading, lending, and liquidity provision, significantly enhancing asset utilization efficiency and user returns. However, while liquid staking improved the liquidity and DeFi composability of staked assets, the security of the underlying staked assets still has limitations and has not achieved cross-protocol security sharing and expansion.

The re-staking mechanism, as an innovation in the staking sector, breaks through this limitation by allowing users to treat the security of native or liquid staked assets as programmable resources, empowering other protocols or networks, and supporting active validation services, thereby obtaining additional incentives beyond the original staking rewards. The essence of re-staking is to abstract the economic security of the underlying blockchain into a shareable resource, enabling multiple networks or modular infrastructures to share the security guarantees of the main chain without needing to build their own validation sets.

This mechanism significantly reduces the reliance of new protocols on independent security mechanisms in the early stages, thereby accelerating their cold starts and trust accumulation. It provides developers with an open architecture that allows them to call upon shared validation capabilities without needing to build their own consensus mechanisms, thus forming a market model of security as a service. Among them, liquidity re-staking is an important branch of the re-staking mechanism, which packages re-staked assets into liquid derivative tokens, allowing users to enjoy re-staking rewards while flexibly utilizing these tokens in DeFi, achieving multi-layered compounding of returns.

2. Multi-chain Extension of the Re-staking Sector

The re-staking mechanism was first scaled in the Ethereum ecosystem, and its rapid development relies on three key factors: a modular on-chain architecture, sufficient liquid staked assets (LST), and an active validator network. However, as Ethereum is a single network, its reusable security resources have certain limitations. Emerging projects are beginning to seek to break the constraints of single-chain structures on re-staking and explore more asset-backed paths.

At the same time, another type of project chooses to build a native re-staking system starting from non-Ethereum ecosystems. A typical example is Babylon, which proposes a staking mechanism design for Bitcoin that does not require modifications to the Bitcoin main chain and provides Bitcoin security as a service for other chains. Overall, the re-staking ecosystem is evolving from a single-chain system centered on Ethereum to a multi-chain integrated structure.

3. Centralization Phenomenon in the Re-staking Sector

Currently, the re-staking sector is mainly concentrated in the Ethereum ecosystem, primarily due to the leading project EigenCloud, which has been designed and deployed based on Ethereum since its inception. According to defillama data, the total TVL of the re-staking sector is currently $20.376 billion, with EigenCloud's total locked value (TVL) at $13.86 billion, ranking first in the re-staking sector, accounting for 68%.

According to the current total TVL rankings in the re-staking sector, the top three projects are EigenCloud, deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, leading with approximately $13.86 billion in locked value; followed by Babylon Protocol, focused on the Bitcoin network, with a total TVL of $5.549 billion; and Symbiotic, also based on Ethereum, with a total TVL of $565 million, emphasizing a modular re-staking structure.

II. Core Participants in the Re-staking Sector

In the following sections, this report will conduct a systematic analysis of the core projects in the current re-staking sector from the infrastructure layer, yield aggregation layer, and active validation service layer, covering leading protocols in various on-chain ecosystems such as Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, and Sui, and will delve into their business models, staking models, and staking data. At the same time, this report will also focus on the market acceptance and current status of these projects, aiming to restore a highly dynamic overview of the re-staking sector.

1. Re-staking Infrastructure Layer

The re-staking infrastructure layer is the cornerstone of the entire re-staking ecosystem. The main function of the infrastructure layer is to allow users to reuse already staked assets (such as ETH or LSTs) for security guarantees across multiple networks or applications, thereby enhancing capital efficiency and network security. These infrastructures not only support re-staking platforms and applications but also enhance the scalability and interoperability of the blockchain ecosystem by allowing them to create customized staking and security models. Below, this report will focus on the main projects in the re-staking infrastructure layer: EigenCloud, Symbiotic, and Babylon.

1.1 Representative Projects in the Infrastructure Layer

1.1.1 EigenCloud (formerly EigenLayer)

EigenCloud, originally named EigenLayer, underwent a product upgrade in June 2025, changing its protocol name to EigenCloud. At the same time, the well-known institution a16z reinvested $70 million into EigenLabs to promote the research and development of EigenCloud. EigenCloud is positioned as an infrastructure platform for verifiable applications and services powered by AI. After the name change, its goal is to build a Web3 native cloud service platform that combines the flexibility of cloud computing with the verifiability of blockchain, and it has recently integrated with the x402 sector. The name change and other measures of EigenCloud also indicate that the platform is actively seeking a strategic direction for transformation.

In this report, we will first focus on EigenCloud's role in the re-staking system. EigenCloud is the protocol that first proposed the concept of re-staking in the Ethereum ecosystem, with the core idea of reusing ETH (or liquid staking derivatives like LST) that has already been staked in the Ethereum consensus layer for the security guarantees of other middleware and infrastructure, thereby achieving cross-protocol extension of Ethereum's economic security.

Actively Validated Services (AVS) is a core architectural design proposed by EigenCloud, aimed at modularizing and opening up Ethereum's economic security capabilities. Under the AVS architecture, external protocols or validation services can obtain security guarantees close to the Ethereum mainnet level without independently building a complete consensus and economic security mechanism, by reusing re-staked assets and validator sets.

EigenCloud aggregates validator resources and re-staked assets to provide unified security access and operational capabilities for multiple AVS, thereby forming a platform market for on-demand security purchasing within the AVS ecosystem. Additionally, to ensure stable operation and prevent short-term arbitrage behavior, EigenCloud has set a 14-day custody period for asset withdrawals.

Business Model

EigenCloud has established a security service market connecting stakers, active validation services (AVS), and application chains by introducing a re-staking mechanism. The specific operational process of its business model is as follows:

Stakers re-stake Ethereum or LSD (such as stETH, rETH) to EigenCloud;

These assets are allocated to AVS for providing validation and security guarantees for external protocols and infrastructure services;

Relevant protocols or service providers pay fees for the security obtained, which are typically distributed as approximately 90% to stakers, about 5% to AVS node operators, and about 5% collected by the EigenCloud protocol as platform revenue.

Staking Model

EigenCloud introduces a flexible re-staking mechanism that supports not only native staked assets but also extends to various derivative assets, allowing more on-chain capital to efficiently participate in the validation and security guarantee process. The specific methods include:

Native Re-staking: Users can directly transfer their natively staked ETH on the Ethereum mainnet to EigenCloud for re-staking. This is the most direct and native staking path, with high security but low flexibility.

LST Re-staking: Users can deposit LSTs (such as stETH, rETH) obtained through liquid staking protocols like Lido into EigenCloud for re-staking. This staking model introduces a DeFi layer as an intermediary, achieving a combination of liquidity and re-staking rewards, balancing flexibility and profitability.

ETH LP Re-staking: LP tokens obtained from providing ETH liquidity in DeFi protocols can also be used for re-staking in EigenCloud. This staking model utilizes DeFi derivative assets that include ETH for re-staking, releasing additional value from LP assets.

LSD LP Re-staking: LP tokens based on LSD, such as Curve's stETH-ETH LP token, can also be re-staked on EigenCloud. This method is the most complex yield stacking path, integrating the yield structures of Ethereum mainnet staking, DeFi liquidity provision, and EigenCloud re-staking.

Staking Data

As of the time of publication, EigenCloud has a total TVL of $13.86 billion, with 8,465,305 ETH re-staked, and 82 AVS connected. Currently, in EigenCloud's re-staking market share, native re-staking using ETH accounts for 87.2% of the market share, while other assets only account for 12.8%.

A more detailed observation point is that, from the growth trend of the total locked value (TVL) of ETH in EigenCloud's native re-staking shown in the chart below, from January to June 2024, after EigenCloud experienced explosive growth, its total TVL of ETH (the largest share being native re-staking) has remained fluctuating in the range of $8 million, with no significant influx of new capital later on.

In summary, although EigenCloud occupies a significant market share in terms of data, considering its transformation and the trend of TVL, its re-staking business is facing the following deep-seated challenges:

First, business growth has hit a stagnation bottleneck. According to the data analysis in this report, after experiencing explosive growth in the first half of 2024, EigenCloud's TVL has long remained fluctuating within a fixed range, lacking subsequent incremental funds. This lack of growth compels it to undergo a name change and transition towards AI infrastructure and cloud services, indirectly confirming that the pure re-staking narrative has lost its appeal.

At the same time, the asset structure is singular and liquidity is limited. Although EigenCloud has designed complex LSD and LP re-staking paths, nearly 90% of the market share is still occupied by native ETH, indicating that its deep integration in the DeFi space has not been successful. Additionally, the 14-day withdrawal custody period set by the protocol sacrifices liquidity, and in the highly volatile crypto market, this time cost and potential penalty risks make the additional returns from re-staking appear less cost-effective.

Finally, the premium capability of the business model is in doubt. Although stakers can receive 90% of the fee distribution, in the face of a complex security-sharing risk model, users' willingness to exchange risk for returns is diminishing at the margin. When the market's recognition of the actual demand for re-staking and the endorsement of security cannot continue to improve, the entire re-staking ecosystem is likely to become a capital stock game lacking real application support.

1.1.2 Symbiotic

Symbiotic is a modular re-staking protocol that supports multiple assets, aimed at providing shared security services for decentralized applications and blockchain networks. Launched in June 2024, Symbiotic is deployed on the Ethereum mainnet. Unlike EigenCloud (which only supports ETH and ETH derivative staking), Symbiotic allows any ERC-20 asset to participate in staking and enables protocols, DAOs, and validation networks to customize their security models and staking rules, offering greater flexibility and composability.

Compared to EigenCloud, Symbiotic has taken a different route, providing a more flexible re-staking mechanism. The core differentiation of Symbiotic lies in its highly modular and cross-chain re-staking architecture, where its validation methods, penalty logic, and collateral assets can be freely configured, supporting multi-asset re-staking. Modular networks such as Layer 2 and oracles can be accessed as needed. It reshapes re-staking from another dimension, providing flexible and secure validation services for the entire on-chain world.

Additionally, an interesting observation point is that the differentiated strategies between EigenCloud and Symbiotic are also seen as a competition among major VCs. EigenCloud previously rejected an investment from Paradigm and chose a16z instead, prompting Paradigm to turn to Symbiotic. At the same time, Symbiotic has also gained support from the co-founder of Lido. Currently, Symbiotic is one of the few leading re-staking protocols that has not issued a native token.

Business Model

Symbiotic's openness and modular design enable it to support various asset types, allowing networks to customize staking implementations according to their needs, thereby achieving higher capital efficiency and security. Symbiotic's business model is based on building a decentralized re-staking market that dynamically matches the supply and demand for security, with its core revenue sources including:

Security Rent: Networks such as Rollups, data availability layers, and oracles pay fees to Symbiotic to rent its security.

Validator Commission Sharing: Symbiotic can charge fees or commission cuts from node operators running validators.

Protocol Fees: Symbiotic can take a certain percentage from the security rent paid by AVS as protocol revenue.

Staking Model

Symbiotic's staking mechanism adopts a modular design, allowing users to stake various different assets, rather than being limited to Ethereum's native token ETH. Users can deposit ETH, staking derivatives, stablecoins, and other ERC-20 assets into different staking vaults, each configured with different rules and purposes, supporting various validation services.

In practice, after users lock their assets into the staking vaults, these assets are used by nodes in the Symbiotic network to support the security validation of different PoS networks or Layer 2 projects. Node operators must meet certain reputation and staking requirements, with a registration system managed by the protocol dynamically managing node qualifications. If a node violates rules or performs poorly, the protocol's penalty system will impose economic penalties on the violating node according to the rules of each staking vault and service, thereby ensuring network security.

Staking Data

As of the time of publication, Symbiotic has a total TVL of $560 million. However, from the following TVL growth trend chart, it is evident that Symbiotic's TVL growth is similar to that of EigenCloud, showing a downward trend after peaking in 2024 (around $2.5 billion). In the second half of 2025, the rate of decline in TVL accelerated, falling to less than one-third of its peak by early 2026. This also reflects that early narrative and incentive-driven funds are gradually withdrawing, while new long-term incremental funds have not continued to enter, indicating a significant weakening of Symbiotic's capital base.

Although Symbiotic initially attracted attention with Paradigm's endorsement and its extremely flexible multi-asset re-staking concept, its current data trend reveals that it faces more severe survival challenges than EigenCloud. Its TVL has dropped from a high of $2.5 billion to less than $600 million, and this sharp decline reflects that its early capital inflow was mainly driven by speculative expectations and airdrop games. As one of the few leading protocols that have not issued tokens, once the airdrop expectation timeline is extended or incentives are diluted, Symbiotic's ability to retain short-term hot money, lacking support from a native token, becomes extremely weak, leading to a noticeable capital outflow.

At the same time, there is a disconnect between multi-asset flexibility and real security needs. Although Symbiotic supports re-staking of various assets such as ERC-20, in practical applications, the vast majority of decentralized services still anchor their core security demands on ETH and its derivatives. The security provided by non-ETH assets has low recognition at the consensus level, which means that its flexibility advantage has not translated into real order increments in actual business deployment.

Symbiotic is also facing strategic passivity issues. Compared to EigenCloud, which has begun transitioning towards AI and cloud computing, Symbiotic is still firmly entrenched in the modular re-staking framework. Without issuing tokens to restart the incentive mechanism, Symbiotic's ability to withstand risks and ecological stickiness is clearly weaker than that of competitors that have completed brand repositioning, facing the risk of being marginalized in the market.

1.1.3 Babylon

Babylon is a native re-staking protocol designed specifically for the Bitcoin ecosystem, dedicated to bringing BTC into the staking economy and providing trustless security guarantees for multiple PoS networks. Unlike traditional cross-chain bridges or wrapped asset mechanisms, Babylon builds its staking system based on Bitcoin's native scripting, allowing users to lock BTC directly on the Bitcoin main chain and earn rewards without relinquishing asset ownership or relying on intermediaries. This mechanism not only retains the self-custody and non-custodial attributes of BTC but also expands the pathways for Bitcoin's staking use, opening up a new direction for the BTCFi ecosystem.

Business Model

Babylon's business model is based on a bilateral market structure, with one side being BTC holders as staking providers, who earn token incentives by locking assets; on the other side are PoS networks that require security, which pay fees to the protocol to introduce BTC as a source of re-staking security. At the same time, Babylon introduces the BABY incentive mechanism to encourage PoS chains to pay security fees to BTC holders, creating a decentralized security leasing market.

Staking Model

Babylon utilizes Bitcoin's native smart scripting capabilities to construct a trustless re-staking system. When users stake BTC, the funds are locked in time-locked or multi-signature contracts, without the need to transfer assets to other chains or third-party custodians. This mechanism allows the usage rights of BTC to support the consensus mechanisms of other networks while retaining ownership and establishing clear rules for penalties and redemptions, forming a trust-minimized staking structure. Currently, after users stake BTC to Babylon, they must go through an unlocking period of about 7 days before they can redeem their assets.

Staking Data

As of now, Babylon has locked approximately 61,063 BTC in the protocol, making it one of the largest BTC re-staking protocols currently. Babylon ranks second in TVL among re-staking protocols. The total amount of BTC staked in Babylon accounts for about 0.31% of the circulating supply of Bitcoin, with staking yields ranging from 0.04% to 1.16%, and the number of active validators reaching 60.

Notably, on January 7, 2026, Babylon completed a $15 million financing round led by a16z. Additionally, Babylon is expected to integrate its technology with the lending protocol Aave in the second quarter of this year. This indicates that Babylon is also breaking away from a purely business-focused model. By introducing BTC in a staked state into the lending ecosystem, Babylon is effectively mimicking the DeFi model on Ethereum. This serves both as compensation for the current insufficient re-staking yields and as an attempt to lock in funds by empowering BTC with more financial attributes, thereby developing BTCFi more comprehensively.

In summary, the performance of leading projects in the re-staking infrastructure layer indicates that the current core issue lies not in mechanism design or insufficient security supply capabilities, but in the difficulty of continuously translating the abstract capability of shared security into real, stable demand and returns. Whether in the Ethereum ecosystem with EigenCloud and Symbiotic or in the Bitcoin ecosystem with Babylon, a common characteristic is that they have technically aggregated high-level underlying security assets, but they generally face pressures of slowing growth, capital withdrawal, or forced transformation at the business level.

2. Re-staking Yield Aggregation Layer

The core function of the yield aggregation layer is to financialize, liquidate, and standardize re-staked assets. Through liquidity re-staking tokens, re-staked positions that were originally limited by unlocking periods and insufficient liquidity are transformed into tradable and composable assets, allowing users to retain exposure to underlying re-staking yields while still participating in lending, market-making, and other DeFi activities. On this basis, asset aggregation platforms such as EtherFi, Pendle, Jito, and Haedal Protocol have gradually developed into the central hubs for yield and risk management within the re-staking system, providing users with more convenient participation paths and returns by aggregating different re-staking sources. However, it is important to note that while the yield aggregation layer enhances capital efficiency, it also accelerates risk.

2.1 Representative Projects of the Yield Aggregation Layer

2.2.1 Pendle

Project Overview

Pendle focuses on making the yields of re-staked assets tradable, allowing already staked or re-staked assets to generate tradable yield rights and principal shares after processing. This means that users' yields can come not only from on-chain channels but can also be cashed out or invested in future yield predictions on the market. The process first converts the original asset into standardized yield tokens (SY), then splits them into principal tokens (PT) and yield tokens (YT), forming a tradable asset combination.

In the early explosive phase of the re-staking track in 2024, Pendle's collaboration with EtherFi successfully captured the breakout point of the track. After EtherFi launched the liquid staking asset eETH, Pendle quickly launched a PT/YT disassembly pool based on eETH, which became the largest pool on the platform within just a few days of its launch. By separating its yield rights from principal rights, Pendle allows users to cash out future yields early or buy yield tokens at a low price for investment, attracting a large number of arbitrageurs and structured funds, driving rapid expansion of the pool.

Business Model

Pendle's core business logic is to split various yield-bearing assets into principal tokens (PT) and yield tokens (YT), thereby creating a market for tradable yields. With the rise of re-staking assets, Pendle has become an important tool for liquidity providers, arbitrageurs, and structured product teams, offering capabilities such as locking in yields early and low-risk arbitrage.

In terms of revenue, Pendle generates income through two paths. One is to charge a protocol fee of 3%–5% on accumulated yields from YT, which is stable and has low correlation with market fluctuations; the other is to collect transaction fees from PT/YT trades, which is also a major source of income. Both sources of income are fully returned to locked vePENDLE users, with none left for the protocol team, enhancing the value of holding governance tokens.

Notably, Pendle has seen exponential growth in trading volume since the beginning of 2024. As of now, Pendle's cumulative trading volume has approached $90 billion, with overall growth being relatively smooth and without significant retracements. This indicates that Pendle's trading activities are not driven by a single event or short-term incentives, but rather accumulate gradually alongside the expansion of product use cases and increased user activity.

Staking Model

Pendle itself does not provide re-staking services but collaborates with platforms like EtherFi (eETH) to bring assets with re-staking yield capabilities onto the Pendle platform. By splitting these assets into principal parts (PT) and future yield parts (YT), Pendle achieves early pricing and liquidity release of re-staking yields. Users can choose to sell YT to lock in future re-staking yields or buy YT in reverse to seek higher yield growth. This mechanism makes Pendle the core platform for trading re-staking yields, transforming previously illiquid future yields into configurable and tradable financial instruments, thereby broadening the use cases for re-staked assets.

Staking Data

Pendle has a total TVL of approximately $3.791 billion and total revenue of $76.03 million. Notably, Pendle's development has not been limited to the re-staking track. As the platform's user base and liquidity continue to expand, Pendle is accelerating its penetration into a broader on-chain yield market. Currently, the assets it supports have included stablecoin yield assets, short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, and more. By building a unified yield separation and pricing market, Pendle is attempting to establish the infrastructure for liquidity in on-chain yield assets. This strategy not only positions Pendle as a core hub for DeFi fixed income and yield curve trading but also lays the foundation for building a broader on-chain yield financial market.

In summary, Pendle has evolved from an early yield-splitting protocol into a comprehensive infrastructure for yield pricing and liquidity across the entire chain. Its sustained growth in trading volume and revenue indicates that Pendle's core value is no longer limited to a single track or asset type, but lies in constructing a cross-asset, cross-cycle yield market.

2.2.2 Haedal Protocol

Haedal Protocol is the first liquid staking protocol on the Sui mainnet, allowing users to stake SUI and receive representative tokens called haSUI. haSUI can further be used to participate in liquidity mining, lending, and derivatives-related applications within mainstream DeFi protocols in the Sui ecosystem, enabling staked assets to retain their native staking yields while gaining liquidity and composability, thereby enhancing capital efficiency and amplifying overall staking yields.

Haedal's model is similar to the re-staking logic, granting derivative properties to staked assets through haSUI, allowing them to be reinvested into other protocols for additional yields. As the most representative LST protocol on Sui, the haSUI produced plays an important asset hub role within the ecosystem. Currently, the re-staking protocols in the Sui ecosystem have not yet formed on a large scale, and in this context, Haedal, as the first liquid re-staking platform on Sui, plays a role in transitioning staked assets from static to dynamic. It represents liquid staking and intersects with the re-staking track in both practical functionality and ecological impact, thus this report includes it in the research scope.

Business Model

Haedal's revenue sources can be divided into three parts: the first is a management fee from staking rewards (approximately 6%); the second is LP, lending, and trading fees generated by haSUI in external DeFi scenarios; the third is net income from combined strategies realized through HMM market-making and haeVault strategy pools. A portion of these revenues is used to replenish protocol operations, while another portion is automatically fed back to haSUI holders through a Rebase mechanism.

Additionally, the protocol implements a veHAEDAL locked governance model, allowing users holding veHAEDAL to participate in voting and receive buyback rewards from protocol revenues, including staking management fees and market-making profits. This revenue and governance closed-loop mechanism enhances users' long-term locking motivation and provides an incentive basis for the protocol's stable development.

Staking Model

Haedal's staking mechanism is designed to be simple and efficient. After users deposit SUI tokens into the protocol, the system automatically distributes the assets across multiple high-quality validator nodes for staking. The allocation strategy is dynamically adjusted based on multi-dimensional indicators such as node historical performance, yield rates, and stability to maximize user staking yields. After staking, users receive liquid staking tokens haSUI, and staking yields are automatically reflected through this token on a daily compounding basis, without requiring additional actions from users.

In addition to basic staking functions, Haedal also offers diversified yield strategies. Users can deposit haSUI into the haVault strategy pool to participate in various combination strategies such as automated arbitrage and liquidity mining, achieving multi-channel asset appreciation. At the same time, Haedal supports users in providing liquidity to decentralized trading platforms using haSUI through a hybrid market maker (HMM) mechanism, thereby earning fee income. The protocol has a built-in risk control mechanism that can promptly adjust staking allocations when validator node performance is abnormal, ensuring asset safety and stable returns.

Staking Data

As of now, Haedal has a total TVL of approximately $97 million. The circulating supply of haSUI exceeds 45.67 million tokens. The current anchoring exchange rate of haSUI is about 1.070282, which means that users holding haSUI have achieved approximately 7.03% cumulative staking returns.

Haedal's staking return mechanism works as follows: when users deposit SUI into the protocol, an equivalent amount of haSUI is minted at the current exchange rate; during the holding period, the number of haSUI remains unchanged, but its exchange ratio with SUI continuously increases, accumulating staking rewards. When users redeem, they can exchange the same amount of haSUI for more SUI at the new exchange rate, thus obtaining returns.

In the initial phase, 1 haSUI corresponds to 1 SUI; as staking rewards continue to accumulate, the exchange rate gradually increases. Currently, this exchange rate has stabilized at around 1.07, indicating that each haSUI corresponds to approximately 7% more SUI assets than initially. This mechanism effectively achieves automatic compounding, allowing users to accumulate returns without frequently manually withdrawing and re-staking rewards, making it suitable for long-term holders to continuously accumulate returns, and reflecting the robustness and transparency of Haedal's staking mechanism.

Haedal has also upgraded its related products, with Haedal Liquidity Vault v2 officially launched to help users achieve long-term sustainable LP returns. However, from the current data, its scale is still in the early stages, with limited capital volume and application coverage, and its ecological influence has not yet been fully realized. The more forward-looking significance of Haedal lies in providing the infrastructure for the financialization of staking assets in the Sui ecosystem, with its subsequent growth potential relying on the expansion of the Sui public chain in DeFi scale and the actual implementation of related scenarios.

2.1.3 Jito

Jito is the most systematically influential re-staking platform in the Solana network, with its core value in capturing the ordering rights revenue (MEV) that originally belonged solely to node operators and returning it to staking users. Jito does not introduce additional service validation or protocol guarantees but aims to maximize the value of staking assets by enhancing basic staking returns.

Unlike the Ethereum re-staking ecosystem, which emphasizes service security guarantees, Jito's approach leans more towards yield optimization. In Solana's high-performance execution environment, Jito monetizes the hidden MEV space in block ordering and incorporates this revenue into the jitoSOL reward system. This mechanism bypasses the complexities of intermediate service layer games, achieving an efficient re-staking path that directly redistributes the protocol's native revenue structure.

Business Model

Jito's business model consists of two parts: basic staking returns and transaction ordering incentives (MEV). Basic staking returns refer to the network's basic inflation rewards generated when users delegate SOL to Jito's validator nodes; transaction ordering incentives (MEV) refer to Jito's design of a specialized ordering system to manage the arrangement of transactions within each block on the Solana network. This ordering itself is valuable, as transactions that are placed earlier may earn more money. Jito publicly auctions the rights to this transaction order, with the highest bidder getting priority. Ultimately, this portion, referred to as ordering income, has 80% returned to users, specifically those staking SOL to receive jitoSOL.

Staking Model

Users can exchange SOL for jitoSOL through the Jito frontend or Solana ecosystem wallets, with the latter serving as a tradable staking certificate while accumulating two types of yields. jitoSOL can be reused for various purposes, including lending, LP market-making, and derivatives trading, forming a composite model of re-staking and re-utilization.

Jito's mechanism resembles a secondary capture of protocol-native revenue, with no additional protocol dependencies or new penalty mechanisms, significantly reducing risk exposure and providing a more certain user experience. This low-friction structure lowers the user threshold, allowing the re-utilization of staking assets to seamlessly integrate into the DeFi system, thereby constructing a re-staking path based on yield stratification.

Currently, Jito's total TVL is approximately $2.026 billion, with an average annual yield of 5.94%, and the total re-staking TVL is about $46.33 million. The re-staking trend of Jito is shown in the figure below, presenting a pattern of phase expansion followed by a decline. Its re-staking TVL continues to grow from the end of 2024 to the first half of 2025, peaking in the second quarter of 2025; thereafter, the capital scale gradually decreases, entering a noticeable decline phase in the second half of 2025, indicating a shift from early rapid expansion to a phase of deleveraging and structural adjustment, with the market's attitude towards re-staking becoming more cautious.

It should be noted that although this report includes Jito in the discussion of re-staking, its re-staking scale still accounts for a relatively low proportion of the overall business. Currently, the re-staking TVL is only about $46 million, which is limited, and re-staking serves more as a marginal supplement to its staking asset re-utilization capability. Overall, Jito's re-staking reflects more of a functional extension and strategic exploration within its system, and its development pace is more susceptible to changes in market cycles and risk preferences.

2.2.4 EtherFi

EtherFi provides users with a way to participate in the automatic integration of Ethereum native staking and EigenCloud re-staking by issuing eETH or weETH. After users deposit ETH into EtherFi, the protocol completes the staking on the Ethereum consensus layer in the background and automatically connects the corresponding assets to EigenCloud's re-staking system; the eETH or weETH held by users serves as a yield certificate that can be used in DeFi scenarios for lending, market-making, etc., while continuously accumulating underlying staking rewards. Compared to traditional re-staking, EtherFi encapsulates complex operations at the protocol layer, allowing users to automatically enjoy dual yields and on-chain liquidity.

EtherFi's sources of income include native staking rewards from the Ethereum network and additional income obtained through EigenCloud's re-staking mechanism. The platform also charges a certain percentage of users' staking rewards as platform income. According to DefiLlama data, EtherFi's total TVL is approximately $8.703 billion, with an average annual yield of 4.29%. From a time series perspective, EtherFi's yield performance is relatively stable overall, while its TVL experiences phase expansion in mid-2025, followed by a decline and entering a range of fluctuations.

It is worth noting that in addition to its layout in the re-staking track, EtherFi is currently accelerating the expansion of crypto applications into real-world consumption scenarios, continuously enhancing its utility beyond the re-staking ecosystem. On June 10, 2025, EtherFi launched the ether.fi Hotels booking platform, allowing Club members to use crypto payments to book over 1 million high-end hotels worldwide and receive 5% cashback through the ether.fi Visa card.

At the same time, ether.fi Cash has partnered with Scroll to utilize its zk-Rollup technology to support physical payments, allowing users to use physical crypto credit cards or Apple Pay or pledge their yield-bearing assets for instant consumption, enjoying up to 5% cashback. Additionally, users depositing LiquidUSD or LiquidETH can earn liquidity rewards of 0.15 ETHFI for every $1,000 held daily. This series of actions indicates that ether.fi is gradually expanding from re-staking to applications in consumer finance and Web3 practical scenarios.

Interestingly, the EtherFi Cash business has resonated well with the market since its launch. According to Dune data, this business has accumulated a consumption amount of approximately $197 million, completing 2.36 million transactions and distributing approximately $7.75 million in cashback, with the number of active cards reaching 46,900. Overall, the transaction frequency and active card numbers indicate that the product has entered the actual usage phase, while the scale of cashback is relatively controllable, suggesting that the current incentives primarily serve to attract and retain users, reflecting that its payment scenario is in a steady growth phase. Notably, usage data shows that cardholders primarily engage in small exploratory purchases, with transaction amounts concentrated around $6 to $50.

In summary, EtherFi is gradually transforming from a single re-staking yield aggregation platform into a crypto financial entry point with real payment capabilities. Current transaction data indicates that this model has entered the real usage phase, but overall, it remains focused on small, high-frequency, exploratory consumption.

For the remaining part, please refer to: "The 'Midlife Crisis' of Re-staking — TVL Stagnation, Demand Shrinkage, and Transformation Pains (Part 2)"

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