The "Midlife Crisis" of Re-pledged Assets: Stagnant TVL, Shrinking Demand, and the Pain of Transformation (Part 1)

CoinW Research Institute

Key points

The essence of restaking 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 verification sets. This mechanism significantly reduces the reliance of new protocols on independent security mechanisms in their early stages, thereby accelerating cold starts and trust accumulation. Restaking initially completed proof-of-concept and early deployments primarily within the Ethereum ecosystem, but Ethereum, as a single network, has certain limitations in its reusable security resources. Therefore, more emerging projects are beginning to seek to break free from the constraints of the single-chain structure on restaking and explore new paths such as cross-chain verification.

Currently, the top three projects in the restaking sector by total TVL are: EigenCloud, deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, which holds an absolute leading position with a total TVL of approximately $13.86 billion; followed by Babylon, which focuses 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, which focuses on a modular restaking structure.

This report categorizes key participants in the restaking sector along three main lines: the infrastructure layer, the revenue aggregation layer, and the active verification service layer. While the infrastructure layer has built a security foundation worth tens of billions of dollars, it generally faces a TVL (Total Value Limit) growth bottleneck and is transforming towards multiple dimensions such as AI. The revenue aggregation layer lowers the barrier to user participation and increases capital efficiency, but also simultaneously lengthens the risk chain, making funds more dependent on market cycles and incentive structures. Although the active verification service layer absorbs a large amount of restaking assets on paper, its punitive constraints and commercialization loop are still in the early verification stage.

While re-staking systems improve capital efficiency and security, they also expose a series of risks. The overall market demand for shared security is shrinking, with limited room for new additions; the same pledged asset is reused multiple times, diluting the safety margin while improving capital efficiency; verification resources are highly concentrated in a few leading platforms and nodes, increasing the risk factor; and the re-staking system lacks a unified risk isolation and pricing mechanism. Furthermore, the long exit cycle of underlying assets, coupled with the high liquidity and multiple revenue streams at the upper layers, makes the re-staking system more susceptible to amplified risks during market fluctuations or periods of trust breach.

The restaking sector is currently undergoing a structural adjustment phase following the waning of its initial hype. Concentrated power, layered risks, and limited TVL growth have become unavoidable constraints. Leading projects, such as EigenCloud, are proactively seeking change, reducing their reliance on a single staking narrative by introducing cross-disciplinary approaches such as AI computing resources, and attempting to reshape their position within the infrastructure layer.

Whether restaking can successfully restructure its operations hinges on its ability to establish predictable and priced security and return benchmarks on-chain, and to transform this security capability into a form of credit that can be absorbed by traditional capital through compliance and RWA (Responsiveness and Risk Assessment). If this condition cannot be met, its influence may be difficult to extend to the broader financial system. Overall, the restaking sector is attempting to move away from a singular narrative of risk and towards a more certain infrastructure role. While this transformation faces the dual challenges of technological complexity and regulatory uncertainty, its systemic restructuring of the on-chain credit system will remain an important dimension for observing the next stage of digital asset ecosystem development.

On-chain revenue mechanisms have garnered more policy attention, and although they have not yet become the main regulatory focus, their potential economic impact and structural innovation value are gradually entering the scope of compliance discussions. In April 2025, Paul Atkins became the new chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and in the early stages of his tenure, he spearheaded the "DeFi and the American Spirit" series of roundtable discussions.

At the fifth meeting held on June 9, 2025, regulators expressed a relatively open attitude towards DeFi for the first time. At the same time, 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, sending a positive policy signal for on-chain financial innovation. Meanwhile, regulations will be further relaxed in 2026, bringing even more possibilities to DeFi.

Against this backdrop, the re-staking mechanism, as one of the development directions of on-chain revenue systems, has attracted market attention regarding its compliance and structural design. This mechanism, by reusing the original staked assets, provides the protocol with additional security services and revenue compounding capabilities without altering the underlying consensus logic.

This report argues that a systematic analysis of current mainstream restaking protocols helps clarify their position within the on-chain revenue system, identify risk exposures in their structure, and provide an analytical foundation for future capital efficiency optimization and cross-protocol collaboration. The following sections will focus on in-depth discussions of leading protocols in the restaking infrastructure layer, restaking revenue aggregation layer, and restaking active verification service layer.

I. Development and Current Status of the Re-pledge Track

1. The Advanced Path of Re-pledged Tracks

Staking, as a fundamental means of ensuring on-chain security through the PoS consensus mechanism, has undergone multi-layered development from the initial native staking to liquidity staking, and then to re-staking. In the native staking stage, users directly lock their assets in the underlying consensus protocol in exchange for validator status and block rewards. While ensuring network security, this resulted in low capital efficiency due to the complete locking of assets. The lack of liquidity and composability of staked assets limited their value release.

Subsequently, Liquidity Staking (LSD) emerged, allowing users to obtain liquidity tokens, such as stETH and rETH, by staking assets. These tokens can participate in trading, lending, and liquidity provision within the DeFi ecosystem, significantly improving asset utilization efficiency and user returns. However, while Liquidity Staking enhances the liquidity of staked assets and the composability of DeFi, the security of its underlying staked assets remains limited, and secure sharing and expansion across protocols have not yet been achieved.

Restaking, as an innovation in the staking sector, breaks through this limitation. It allows users to use the security of assets natively staked or liquid-stakinged as a programmable resource to further empower other protocols or networks, supporting active verification services, thereby obtaining additional incentives beyond the original staking rewards. The essence of restaking is to abstract the economic security of the underlying blockchain into a shareable resource, enabling multiple networks or modular infrastructures to share the security guarantee of the main chain without having to build their own verification sets.

This mechanism significantly reduces the reliance of new protocols on independent security mechanisms in their early stages, thereby accelerating their cold start and trust accumulation. It provides developers with an open architecture that allows them to invoke shared verification capabilities without building their own consensus mechanisms, thus creating a market model of security as a service. Liquidity restaking is a crucial branch of the restaking mechanism. By packaging restaking assets into liquid derivative tokens, it allows users to enjoy restaking rewards and flexibly utilize these tokens in DeFi, achieving a multi-layered compounding of returns.

2. Multi-chain extension of the re-staking track

Restaking mechanisms were first implemented on a large scale within the Ethereum ecosystem, and their rapid development relies on three key elements: a modular on-chain architecture, sufficient liquid collateral (LST), and an active validator network. However, as a single network, Ethereum has limitations in its reusable security resources. Emerging projects are beginning to seek to break free from the constraints of the single-chain structure on restaking and explore new paths such as more asset-backed collateral.

Meanwhile, another type of project chooses to build a native restaking system from outside the Ethereum ecosystem. A typical example is Babylon, which proposes a staking mechanism design that does not require modification of the Bitcoin main chain and provides Bitcoin Security-as-a-Service for other chains. Overall, the restaking ecosystem is evolving from a single-chain system centered on Ethereum to a multi-chain integrated structure.

3. Centralization in the re-staking sector

Currently, the restaking market is primarily concentrated within the Ethereum ecosystem, mainly due to the leading project, EigenCloud, which has been architecturally designed and deployed on Ethereum since its inception. According to Defillama data, the total TVL (Value Locked) in the restaking market is currently $20.376 billion, with EigenCloud accounting for $13.86 billion, ranking first and representing 68% of the total.

Based on the current total TVL rankings in the restaking sector, the top three projects are: EigenCloud, deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, which holds an absolute leading position with a total TVL of approximately $13.86 billion; Babylon Protocol, which focuses 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, which focuses on a modular restaking structure.

II. Core Participants in the Re-pledge Track

The following report will systematically analyze the core projects in the current restaking sector from the infrastructure layer, yield aggregation layer, and active verification service layer. It will cover leading protocols in multiple on-chain ecosystems such as Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, and SUI, and delve into their business models, staking models, and staking data. Furthermore, this report will also focus on the market acceptance and current status of these projects, striving to present a comprehensive picture of the highly dynamic restaking sector.

1. Re-pledged infrastructure layer

The restaking infrastructure layer is the cornerstone of the entire restaking ecosystem. Its primary function is to allow users to reuse staked assets (such as ETH or LSTs) for security across multiple networks or applications, thereby improving capital efficiency and network security. This infrastructure not only supports restaking platforms and applications but also enhances the scalability and interoperability of the blockchain ecosystem by allowing them to create customized staking and security models. This report will highlight key projects in the restaking infrastructure layer: EigenCloud, Symbiotic, and Babylon.

1.1 Representative projects at the infrastructure layer

1.1.1 EigenCloud (formerly EigenLayer)

EigenCloud, formerly known as EigenLayer, underwent a product upgrade in June 2025, changing its protocol name to EigenCloud. Simultaneously, the well-known firm a16z invested an additional $70 million in EigenLabs to support the research and development and promotion of EigenCloud. Positioned as an AI infrastructure platform for verifiable applications and services, EigenCloud, after its name change, aims to build a Web3-native cloud service platform that combines the flexibility of cloud computing with the verifiability of blockchain, and has recently integrated with the x402 track. These actions, including the name change, indicate that the platform is actively seeking a strategic direction for transformation.

In this report, we will first focus on EigenCloud's restaking system. EigenCloud was one of the first protocols to propose the concept of restaking in the Ethereum ecosystem. Its core idea is to reuse ETH (or liquid staking derivatives such as LST) already staked at the Ethereum consensus layer for security purposes in 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. Its goal is to modularize and expose Ethereum's economic security capabilities. Under the AVS architecture, external protocols or validating services do not need to independently build complete consensus and economic security mechanisms. They can obtain near-Ethereum mainnet-level security by reusing re-staking assets and validator sets.

EigenCloud aggregates validator resources and restaking assets to provide unified secure access and operation capabilities for multiple AVS systems, thereby creating a platform-based market for on-demand security purchases within the AVS ecosystem. Meanwhile, to ensure stable operation and prevent short-term arbitrage, EigenCloud has implemented a 14-day escrow period for asset withdrawals.

Business Model

EigenCloud has established a security service marketplace that connects stakers, the Active Verification Service (AVS), and application chains by introducing a restaking mechanism. The specific operation process of its business model is as follows:

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

These assets will be allocated to AVS to provide verification and security for external protocols and infrastructure services;

The relevant agreements or service providers pay for the security obtained, with approximately 90% of the fees allocated to stakers, approximately 5% to AVS node operators, and approximately 5% collected by the EigenCloud agreement as platform revenue.

Pledge Model

EigenCloud introduces a flexible restaking mechanism that not only supports natively staked assets but also extends to various derivative assets, enabling more on-chain capital to participate efficiently in the verification and security process. Specifically, this includes the following methods:

Native restaking: Users can directly transfer their native ETH staked on the Ethereum mainnet to EigenCloud for restaking. This is the most direct and native staking path, bypassing the DeFi layer, offering higher security but lower flexibility.

LST Restaking: LSTs (such as stETH and rETH) obtained through liquidity staking protocols like Lido are deposited into EigenCloud for restaking. This staking model introduces a DeFi layer as an intermediary, achieving a combination of liquidity and restaking yields, balancing flexibility and profitability.

ETH LP Restaking: LP tokens earned by users providing ETH liquidity in DeFi protocols can also be used for restaking on EigenCloud. This staking model utilizes DeFi derivative assets composed of ETH for restaking, unlocking the added value of LP assets.

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

Pledged data

As of press time, EigenCloud's total TVL is $13.86 billion, with 8,465,305 ETH already re-staking and 82 AVS connections integrated. Currently, in EigenCloud's restaking market share, native restaking (i.e., re-staking assets using ETH) accounts for 87.2%, while other assets account for only 12.8%.

A more detailed observation is that, looking at the growth trend of the total value locked (TVL) of ETH in EigenCloud's native restaking in the chart below, after EigenCloud experienced explosive growth from January to June 2024, its total TVL of ETH (i.e., native restaking, which accounts for the largest share) has remained within the range of $8 million, and there has been no larger influx of new ETH in the later period.

In summary, although EigenCloud holds a significant market share at the data level, its restaking business faces the following deeper challenges, considering its transformation and the trend of TVL:

First, business growth has stagnated. Based on the data analysis above, after experiencing explosive growth in the first half of 2024, EigenCloud's TVL has remained within a fixed range for an extended period, lacking subsequent incremental funding. This sluggish growth has forced it to change its name and transform into an AI infrastructure and cloud service provider, indirectly confirming that the simple re-staking narrative has lost its appeal.

Meanwhile, the asset structure is too simple and liquidity is limited. Although EigenCloud designed a complex LSD and LP restaking path, nearly 90% of the market share is still held by native ETH, indicating that its deep integration in the DeFi field has not been successful. Furthermore, the 14-day escrow period for withdrawals sacrifices liquidity. In the highly volatile crypto market, this time cost and potential penalty risk make the additional returns from restaking seem insufficiently cost-effective.

Finally, the premium pricing power of the business model is questionable. Although pledgers receive 90% of the fees, users' willingness to risk for returns diminishes marginally in the face of a complex, security-sharing risk model. When the market's actual demand for re-staking and its acceptance of security guarantees cannot continue to improve, the entire re-staking ecosystem risks becoming a mere game of existing funds lacking practical application support.

1.1.2 Symbiotic

Symbiotic is a modular restaking protocol that supports multiple assets and aims to provide shared security services for decentralized applications and blockchain networks. Launched in June 2024, Symbiotic's mainnet is deployed on Ethereum. Unlike EigenCloud (which only supports ETH and ETH derivatives staking), Symbiotic supports staking of any ERC-20 asset and allows protocols, DAOs, and validator networks to customize their security models and staking rules, offering greater flexibility and composability.

Compared to EigenCloud, Symbiotic takes a different approach, offering a more flexible restaking mechanism. Symbiotic's core differentiator lies in its highly modular and cross-chain restaking architecture. Its verification methods, penalty logic, and collateral assets are all freely configurable, supporting multi-asset restaking, and modular networks such as Layer 2 and oracles can be integrated on demand. It reshapes restaking from another dimension, providing flexible and secure verification services for the entire on-chain world.

Furthermore, another interesting observation is that the differentiated strategies of EigenCloud and Symbiotic are seen as a game between major VCs. EigenCloud rejected Paradigm's investment and instead chose a16z, prompting Paradigm to choose Symbiotic. Meanwhile, Symbiotic also received support from the co-founder of Lido. Currently, Symbiotic is one of the few leading restaking protocols that has not yet issued its own native token.

Business Model

Symbiotic's open and modular design enables it to support multiple asset types, allowing networks to customize staking implementations to meet their specific needs, thereby achieving higher capital efficiency and security. Symbiotic's business model is based on building a decentralized restaking market that dynamically matches security supply and demand. Its core revenue sources include:

Security rent: Networks such as Rollups, data availability layers, oracles pay Symbiotic a fee to rent its security.

Validator commission sharing: Symbiotic can charge fees or commissions to node operators who run validators.

Agreement Fees: Symbiotic may receive a percentage of the security rent paid by AVS as agreement revenue.

Pledge Model

Symbiotic's staking mechanism employs a modular design, allowing users to stake with a variety of assets, rather than being limited to the Ethereum native token ETH. Users can deposit various ERC-20 assets, such as ETH, staked derivatives, and stablecoins, into different staking vaults. Each staking vault is configured with different rules and uses, and supports different verification services.

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

Pledged data

As of press time, Symbiotic's total TVL was $560 million. However, as can be clearly observed from the TVL growth trend chart below, Symbiotic's TVL growth is similar to EigenCloud's, showing a downward trend after peaking in 2024 (approximately $2.5 billion). The rate of decline accelerated after the second half of 2025, falling back to less than one-third of its peak by early 2026. This reflects the gradual withdrawal of funds driven by early narratives and incentives, while new long-term incremental funds have not followed suit, indicating a significant weakening of Symbiotic's funding base.

While Symbiotic initially garnered significant attention thanks to Paradigm's backing and its highly flexible multi-asset restaking concept, its current data reveals a more severe survival challenge than EigenCloud. Its TVL (TVL) has plummeted from a high of $2.5 billion to less than $600 million, a precipitous decline reflecting that its early inflows were primarily driven by points-based expectations and airdrop speculation. As one of the few leading protocols without its own token, Symbiotic's lack of native token support makes it extremely vulnerable to retaining short-term hot money once the airdrop expectation period drags on or incentives are diluted, leading to a significant capital outflow.

At the same time, there is a disconnect between multi-asset flexibility and real security needs. Although Symbiotic supports restaking on various assets such as ERC-20, in practice, the core security requirements of most decentralized services are still anchored to ETH and its derivatives. The security provided by non-ETH assets has low consensus recognition, which means that their flexibility advantage has not translated into real order growth in actual commercial applications.

Symbiotic has also encountered a strategic passivity issue. Compared to EigenCloud, which has begun its transformation towards AI and cloud computing, Symbiotic is currently still clinging to its modular restaking framework. Without issuing tokens to restart the incentive mechanism, Symbiotic faces a shrinking existing market, and its risk resistance and ecosystem stickiness are significantly weaker than its competitors who have already completed brand rebranding, putting it at risk of being marginalized by the market.

1.1.3 Babylon

Babylon is a native restaking protocol designed specifically for the Bitcoin ecosystem, aiming to introduce BTC into the staking economy and provide trustless security for multiple PoS networks. Unlike traditional cross-chain bridges or asset wrapping mechanisms, Babylon builds its staking system based on native Bitcoin scripts, allowing users to lock BTC directly on the Bitcoin mainnet and earn rewards without relinquishing ownership or relying on intermediaries. This mechanism not only preserves BTC's self-custodial and non-custodial attributes but also expands the staking pathways of Bitcoin, opening up new directions for the BTCFi ecosystem.

Business Model

Babylon's business model is based on a two-sided market structure. On one end are BTC holders who act as staking providers, earning token incentives by locking up assets; on the other end are PoS networks that require security, paying fees to the protocol to bring in BTC as a source of security for re-staking. Simultaneously, Babylon introduces the BABY incentive mechanism to incentivize PoS chains to pay security fees to BTC holders, thus building a decentralized security leasing market.

Pledge Model

Babylon leverages Bitcoin's native smart scripting capabilities to build a trustless restaking system. When users stake BTC, their funds are locked in a time lock or multisignature contract, eliminating the need to transfer assets to other chains or third-party custodians. This mechanism allows the right to use BTC to support the consensus mechanisms of other networks while retaining ownership and establishing clear severance and redemption rules, forming a trust-minimized staking structure. Currently, users who stake BTC in Babylon must wait approximately 7 days for a lockout period before redeeming their staked BTC.

Pledged data

To date, Babylon has locked approximately 61,063 BTC in its protocol, making it one of the largest BTC restaking protocols. Currently, Babylon ranks second in TVL among restaking protocols. The total BTC staked on Babylon represents approximately 0.31% of the circulating Bitcoin supply, with a staking yield ranging from 0.04% to 1.16%, and 60 active validators.

Notably, on January 7, 2026, Babylon completed a $15 million funding round, led by a16z. Simultaneously, Babylon plans to integrate its technology with the lending protocol Aave in the second quarter of this year. This also indicates that Babylon is moving beyond a purely business-oriented model. By introducing staked BTC into the lending ecosystem, Babylon is essentially mimicking the DeFi model on Ethereum. This serves both as compensation for the current insufficient restaking yields and as an attempt to lock in funds by empowering BTC with more financial attributes, thus enabling a more comprehensive development of BTCFi.

The performance of leading projects in the restaking infrastructure layer reveals that the core issue is not insufficient mechanism design or security supply capacity, but rather the difficulty in sustainably translating the abstract capability of shared security into real and stable demand and returns. Whether it's EigenCloud and Symbiotic in the Ethereum ecosystem, or Babylon in the Bitcoin ecosystem, they all share the common characteristic of having technically aggregated high-level underlying security assets, but at the business level, they generally face pressure from slowing growth, capital withdrawal, or forced transformation.

2. Re-pledge yield aggregation layer

The core function of the yield aggregation layer is to financialize, liquidate, and standardize resold assets. Through liquid resold tokens, resold positions that were previously limited by unlocking cycles and lacked sufficient liquidity are transformed into tradable and composable assets, allowing users to participate in DeFi activities such as lending and market making while retaining exposure to the underlying resold yield. Building on this, asset aggregation platforms such as EtherFi, Pendle, Jito, and Haedal Protocol have gradually developed into the yield and risk management hub of the resold system, providing users with more convenient participation paths and returns by aggregating different resold sources. However, it is important to note that while the yield aggregation layer improves capital efficiency, it also accelerates risk.

2.1 Representative Projects of the Revenue Layer Aggregation Layer

2.2.1 Pendle

Project Overview

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

In the early stages of the restaking boom in 2024, Pendle's collaboration with EtherFi successfully captured the sector's explosive growth. After EtherFi launched its liquidity staking asset, eETH, Pendle quickly launched a PT/YT splitting pool based on eETH. Within just a few days of its launch, this pool became the largest on the platform. By separating the right to yield from the right to principal, Pendle allowed users to cash out future earnings early or buy yield tokens at a low price for investment, attracting a large number of arbitrageurs and structured funds, driving the pool's rapid expansion.

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 where yields can be traded. With the rise of restaking assets, Pendle has become an important tool for liquidity providers, arbitrageurs, and structured product teams, providing capabilities such as locking in yields in advance and low-risk arbitrage.

In terms of revenue, Pendle generates income through two pathways. First, it charges a 3%–5% protocol fee on accumulated YT earnings; this revenue stream is stable and has low correlation with market fluctuations. Second, it collects transaction fees from PT/YT trading, which is also its primary source of income. All of this revenue is returned to locked vePENDLE users, with no remainder going to the protocol team. This fully distributed revenue mechanism enhances the value of holding the governance token.

It's worth noting that Pendle's trading volume has experienced exponential growth since the beginning of 2024. To date, Pendle's cumulative trading volume has approached $90 billion, with a relatively smooth growth trajectory and no sharp pullbacks. This indicates that Pendle's trading activity is not driven by a single event or short-term incentive, but rather by a gradual accumulation accompanying the expansion of product usage scenarios and increased user activity.

Pledge Model

Pendle itself does not offer restaking services. Instead, it partners with platforms like EtherFi (eETH) to introduce assets with restaking yield potential to the Pendle platform. By splitting these assets into principal (PT) and future yield (YT), Pendle enables pre-pricing of restaking yields and releases liquidity. Users can choose to sell YT to lock in future restaking yields or buy YT to pursue higher yield growth. This mechanism makes Pendle the core platform for trading restaking yields, transforming previously illiquid future yields into configurable and tradable financial instruments, thus broadening the use cases for restaking assets.

Pledged data

Pendle's total TVL is approximately $3.791 billion, with total revenue of $76.03 million. Of particular note is that Pendle's development has not stopped at the restaking track. With the platform's user base and liquidity continuing to expand, Pendle is accelerating its penetration into a broader on-chain yield market. Currently, its supported assets include stablecoin yield assets and short-term US Treasury bonds. By building a unified yield separation and pricing market, Pendle is attempting to establish the infrastructure for liquidity across the entire chain of yield assets. This strategy not only allows Pendle to gradually develop into 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 full-chain yield pricing and liquidity infrastructure. Its continued growth in trading volume and revenue indicates that Pendle's core value is no longer limited to a single sector or asset type, but rather lies in building a yield market across assets and timeframes.

2.2.2 Haedal Protocol

Haedal Protocol is the first liquidity staking protocol on the Sui mainnet. Users can earn the representative token haSUI by staking SUI. haSUI can be further used to participate in liquidity mining, lending, and derivatives-related applications of mainstream DeFi protocols within the Sui ecosystem. This allows staked assets to retain native staking rewards while gaining liquidity and composability, thereby improving capital utilization efficiency and amplifying overall staking returns.

Haedal's model is similar to restaking logic, endowing pledged assets with derivative attributes through haSUI, allowing them to be reinvested in other protocols to generate additional returns. As the most representative LST protocol on Sui, Haedal's haSUI plays a crucial asset hub role in the ecosystem. Furthermore, since restaking protocols in the Sui ecosystem are not yet widely established, Haedal, as Sui's first liquidity restaking platform, plays a vital role in driving the shift of pledged assets from static to dynamic. It is both a representative of liquidity staking and overlaps with the restaking sector in terms of practical function and ecosystem impact; therefore, this report also includes it in its research scope.

Business Model

Haedal's revenue streams can be divided into three parts: first, management fees from staking rewards (approximately 6%); second, LP, lending, and transaction fees generated by haSUI in external DeFi scenarios; and third, net returns from combined strategies achieved through HMM market making and the haeVault strategy pool. A portion of this revenue is used to cover protocol operations, while the remainder is automatically returned to haSUI holders through the Rebase mechanism.

Furthermore, the protocol implements a veHAEDAL lock-up governance model, allowing veHAEDAL holders to participate in voting and receive repurchase rewards from protocol revenues, including staking management fees and market-making profits. This closed-loop mechanism of returns and governance enhances users' motivation to lock up their veHAEDAL long-term and provides an incentive foundation for the protocol's stable development.

Pledge Model

Haedal's staking mechanism is 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 multiple dimensions of indicators such as the node's historical performance, yield, and stability to maximize user staking returns. After staking, users will receive the liquidity staking token haSUI, and staking returns are automatically reflected in this token through daily compound interest, requiring no additional action from the user.

Beyond its basic staking functionality, Haedal offers diversified yield strategies. Users can deposit haSUI into the haVault strategy pool to participate in various combined strategies such as automated arbitrage and liquidity mining, achieving multi-channel asset appreciation. Simultaneously, Haedal, through its Hybrid Market Maker (HMM) mechanism, allows users to provide liquidity to decentralized exchanges using haSUI, thereby earning transaction fees. Furthermore, the protocol incorporates a built-in risk control mechanism that can promptly adjust staking allocations when validator nodes exhibit abnormal performance, ensuring asset security and stable returns.

Pledged data

As of now, Haedal's total TVL is approximately $97 million. The circulating supply of haSUI exceeds 45.67 million. The current pegged exchange rate for haSUI is approximately 1.070282, meaning users holding haSUI have achieved a cumulative staking yield of approximately 7.03%.

Haedal's staking reward mechanism works like this: when a user deposits SUI into the protocol, an equivalent amount of haSUI is minted at the exchange rate at that time; during the holding period, the number of haSUI remains unchanged, but its exchange ratio with SUI continuously increases, accumulating staking rewards; when a user redeems, they can use the same amount of haSUI to exchange back for more SUI at the new exchange rate, thereby earning returns.

Initially, 1 haSUI corresponds to 1 SUI; as staking rewards accumulate, the exchange rate gradually increases. Currently, the exchange rate has stabilized at approximately 1.07, representing that the actual SUI assets behind each haSUI have increased by about 7% compared to the initial value. This mechanism effectively achieves automatic compounding, eliminating the need for users to frequently withdraw and re-stake rewards manually. It is suitable for long-term holders to continuously accumulate returns and also reflects the robustness and transparency of the Haedal staking mechanism.

Haedal has also upgraded its related products, with Haedal Liquidity Vault v2 now officially launched to help users achieve long-term sustainable LP returns. However, based on current data, its scale is still in its early stages, with limited funding and application coverage, and its ecosystem influence has not yet been fully realized. Haedal's more forward-looking significance lies in pre-setting the infrastructure for the financialization of pledged assets within the Sui ecosystem. Its future growth potential will depend on the expansion of the Sui public chain in DeFi and the actual implementation of related scenarios.

2.1.3 Jito

Jito is the most systemically influential restaking platform in the Solana network. Its core value lies in capturing the ranking rights (MEV) revenue that originally belonged only to node operators and returning it to staking users. Jito does not introduce additional service verification or protocol guarantees, but instead maximizes the value of staked assets by increasing the basic staking revenue.

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

Business Model

Jito's business model consists of two parts: basic staking rewards and transaction ranking incentives (MEV). Basic staking rewards refer to the network's basic inflationary rewards generated when users delegate SOL to Jito validator nodes. Transaction ranking incentives (MEV) refer to a dedicated ranking system designed by Jito to manage the order of transactions within each block on the Solana network. This ranking order itself has value; for example, transactions ranked higher may earn more money. Jito publicly auctions this right to transaction ranking, with the highest bidder ranking higher. Ultimately, this portion is called additional ranking revenue, of which 80% is returned to users—those who stake SOL to obtain jitoSOL.

Pledge Model

Users can exchange SOL for jitoSOL through the Jito frontend or the Solana ecosystem wallet. The latter is a tradable staking certificate that accumulates both types of rewards. jitoSOL can be used for secondary purposes, including lending, LP market making, and derivatives trading, forming a composite model of restaking and reuse.

Jito's mechanism resembles a secondary capture of native protocol yields, without additional protocol dependencies or novel penalty mechanisms, thus significantly reducing risk exposure and providing a more certain user experience. This low-friction structure lowers the user threshold, allowing the reuse of staked assets to be seamlessly embedded into DeFi systems, thereby constructing a restaking path based on yield tiers.

Currently, Jito's total TVL is approximately $2.026 billion, with an average annual yield of 5.94%, and its total re-pledged TVL is approximately $46.33 million. The Jito re-pledge trend is shown in the chart below, exhibiting a pattern of expansion followed by a decline and adjustment. Its re-pledged TVL continued to grow from the end of 2024 to the first half of 2025, reaching a peak in the second quarter of 2025; thereafter, the funding scale gradually decreased, entering a significant decline phase in the second half of 2025. This indicates that re-pledged lending has gradually shifted from an early period of rapid expansion to a phase of deleveraging and structural adjustment, and the market's attitude towards re-pledged lending has become more cautious.

It should be noted that although this report includes Jito within the scope of replenishment, its replenishment volume still accounts for a relatively small proportion of its overall business. Currently, the replenished TVL is only about US$46 million, a limited percentage, and replenishment is more of a marginal supplement to its ability to reuse pledged assets. Overall, Jito's replenishment within its system is more of a functional extension and strategic exploration, and its development pace is more susceptible to changes in market cycles and risk appetite.

2.2.4 EtherFi

EtherFi offers users a way to participate in DeFi by issuing eETH or weETH, automatically integrating native Ethereum staking with EigenCloud restaking. After a user deposits ETH into EtherFi, the protocol completes the Ethereum consensus layer staking in the background and automatically connects the corresponding assets to EigenCloud's restaking system. The eETH or weETH held by the user serves as yield certificates and can be used for lending, market making, and other operations in DeFi scenarios, while continuously accumulating underlying staking yields. Compared to traditional restaking, EtherFi encapsulates complex operations at the protocol layer, allowing users to automatically enjoy dual yields and on-chain liquidity.

EtherFi's yield comes from native staking rewards on the Ethereum network and additional yields earned through restaking via EigenCloud. The platform also takes a percentage of users' staking earnings as platform revenue. According to DefiLlama data, EtherFi's total TVL is approximately $8.703 billion, with an average annual yield of 4.29%. Looking at the time series, EtherFi's yield has been relatively stable overall, while its TVL experienced a period of expansion in mid-2025, followed by a decline and subsequent range-bound trading.

It's worth noting that in addition to its restaking efforts, Ether.fi is also accelerating the expansion of its crypto applications into real-world consumer scenarios, continuously broadening its usability beyond the restaking ecosystem. On June 10, 2025, Ether.fi launched the ether.fi Hotels booking platform, allowing Club members to book over 1 million high-end hotels worldwide using crypto payments and earn 5% cashback through the ether.fi Visa card.

Meanwhile, ether.fi Cash has partnered with Scroll to support physical payments using its zk-Rollup technology. Users can make instant purchases using physical crypto credit cards or Apple Pay, or by pledging their interest-bearing assets, earning up to 5% cashback. Additionally, users who deposit LiquidUSD or LiquidETH will receive a daily liquidity reward of 0.15 ETHFI for every $1,000 they hold. These moves indicate that ether.fi is gradually expanding from restaking to applications in consumer finance and Web3 real-world scenarios.

Interestingly, EtherFi Cash has been well-received by the market since its launch. According to Dune data, the service has accumulated approximately $197 million in spending, completed 2.36 million transactions, and issued approximately $7.75 million in cashback, with 46,900 active cards. Overall, the transaction frequency and number of active cards indicate that the product has entered the actual usage stage, while the relatively controllable cashback scale suggests that the current incentives are more effective in user acquisition and retention, reflecting a steady expansion in its payment scenarios. It's noteworthy that usage data shows cardholders primarily engage in small, exploratory purchases, with the most frequent transactions concentrated in the $6-$50 range.

In summary, EtherFi is gradually transforming from a simple restaking yield aggregation platform into a crypto-financial gateway with real-world payment capabilities. Current transaction data indicates that this model has entered the real-world usage stage, but overall it is still mainly focused on small-amount, high-frequency, and exploratory consumption.