The End of the Staking Wave: Major Projects' Transition Sparks Industry Reflection

In the first half of 2024, the concept of "re-staking" has sparked a wave in the cryptocurrency market, becoming a core topic of the ecosystem. The rise of EigenLayer has led to the emergence of projects like Ether.fi and Renzo, and the market for re-staking token (LRT) is rapidly expanding.

However, there have been significant changes in the industry landscape recently. Both leading projects have announced strategic adjustments: Ether.fi is transforming into a new type of crypto bank, planning to launch cash cards and staking services aimed at U.S. users; Eigen Labs has announced a layoff of about 25%, restructuring resources to focus on the development of the new product EigenCloud. Do these changes indicate that the re-staking track is heading towards decline?

From Prosperity to Reshuffle

In recent years, the re-staking sector has undergone a cycle from conceptual experimentation to an influx of capital. Data shows that over 70 projects have emerged in this field. As a pioneer, EigenLayer has driven the collective explosion of liquidity re-staking protocols. In 2024, the number of financing events in this sector surged to 27, attracting nearly $230 million in investment, making it one of the hottest areas in the crypto market.

However, as we enter 2025, the pace of financing begins to slow down, and the industry's enthusiasm gradually cools. At the same time, 11 projects including Moebius Finance, goTAO, and FortLayer successively cease operations, and the industry bubble is gradually being cleared.

Currently, EigenLayer remains the industry leader, with a total locked value of (TVL) of about $14.2 billion, accounting for over 63% of the market share in the entire industry. Within its ecosystem, Ether.fi, Kelp DAO, and Renzo account for 75%, 12%, and 8.5% of the share, respectively.

Data shows that growth momentum is slowing down.

As of now, the total TVL of the re-staking protocol is approximately $22.4 billion, down 22.7% from the historical peak in December 2024. Although the overall locked-in scale remains considerable, the growth momentum has clearly slowed.

User activity has decreased more significantly. Data shows that the daily active deposit users for Ethereum's liquidity re-staking have plummeted from a peak of over a thousand people in July 2024 to currently just over thirty. The number of daily unique deposit addresses for EigenLayer has even fallen to single digits.

From the perspective of validators, the attractiveness 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.

In addition, the token prices of several major projects have pulled back more than 70% from their highs. Overall, although the re-staking sector still retains a certain scale, user activity and participation enthusiasm have significantly declined, and the ecosystem is falling into a state of "weightlessness."

Head project transformation: seeking new growth points

As the "airdrop bonuses" fade and the enthusiasm in the track diminishes, staking projects begin to face the challenge of how to achieve long-term growth.

Taking Ether.fi as an example, its revenue exceeded $3.5 million for two consecutive months at the end of 2024, before dropping to $2.4 million in April 2025. In the face of the reality of slowing growth momentum, a single staking function is difficult to support a complete business model.

Ether.fi has chosen to transform into a "new type of cryptocurrency bank" by creating a closed-loop financial operation through real-world scenarios such as bill payments, salary disbursement, savings, and consumption. The "cash card + re-stake" dual-track combination has become its new engine for attempting to activate user stickiness and retention.

EigenLayer has opted for a restructuring that leans more towards the infrastructure strategic level. Eigen Labs announced a layoff of about 25% and will concentrate resources on the new product developer platform EigenCloud. EigenCloud integrates EigenDA, EigenVerify, and EigenCompute, aiming to provide a universal trust infrastructure for on-chain and off-chain applications.

Although these two transformation paths are different, they essentially point to the same logic: to shift "re-staking" from a terminal narrative to a "starting module," transforming the purpose itself into a means of building more complex application systems.

Re-staking has not disappeared, but its "single-thread growth model" is difficult to sustain. It can only continue to attract users and capital when it is embedded in more scalable application narratives. The re-staking track is searching for new footholds and vitality within a more complex application landscape.