Re-staking Track Panorama: Opportunities, Risks, and Reconstruction

2026-01-19 17:32:37

Collection

The re-staking track is currently in a phase of structural adjustment following the retreat of the hype, where power concentration, layered risks, and limited TVL growth have become unavoidable constraints.

CoinW Research Institute

Key Points

The essence of restaking 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 the need 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. Restaking initially completed 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 restaking and explore new paths such as cross-chain validation.
Currently, the top three projects in the restaking sector by total TVL are EigenCloud, deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, leading with a locked position 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 restaking structure.
This report organizes the core participants in the restaking 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 bottlenecks in TVL growth and is transitioning towards diverse dimensions such as AI; the yield aggregation layer lowers the participation threshold for users and enhances capital efficiency, but 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 restaked assets on paper, still remains in the early validation stage regarding punitive constraints and commercial closure.
While the restaking system enhances 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 coefficient; and there is a lack of unified risk isolation and pricing mechanisms within the restaking system. At the same time, the exit cycle of underlying assets is relatively long, while the upper layer is highly liquid and combines multiple sources of yield, making the restaking system more prone to amplifying risks during market fluctuations or trust deterioration.
The restaking sector is currently in a structural adjustment phase after the initial hype has waned, 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 restaking 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 accept through compliance and RWA. If this condition cannot be met, its influence may struggle to expand into a broader financial system. Overall, the restaking 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.

Key Points
I. Development and Current Status of the Restaking Sector

The Advancement of the Restaking Sector
The Multi-Chain Extension of the Restaking Sector
The Centralization Phenomenon in the Restaking Sector
II. Core Participants in the Restaking Sector
Restaking Infrastructure Layer
Restaking Yield Aggregation Layer
Restaking Active Validation Service Layer
III. Vulnerabilities and Risk Points of the Restaking System
Risks of Insufficient Demand for Shared Security
Risks of Security Dilution under Financial Leverage
Risks of High Concentration of Trust
Weaknesses in the Liquidation Chain and Negative Feedback
Risks of Liquidity Mismatch and Yield Volatility
IV. Conclusion
V. References
On-chain yield mechanisms have received more attention at the policy level. 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, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appointed Paul Atkins as its new chairman, who led the initiation of the "DeFi and the American Spirit" series of roundtable discussions in the early days of his tenure.
In the fifth meeting held on June 9, 2025, regulators expressed a relatively open attitude towards DeFi for the first time. Meanwhile, the legislative framework established by the GENUS Act provides 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, regulation is expected to further relax in 2026, bringing more possibilities for DeFi.
Against this backdrop, the restaking 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 capability for protocols by reusing native staked assets without changing the underlying consensus logic.
This report believes that a systematic analysis of the currently mainstream restaking 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. In the following sections, this report will focus on in-depth discussions of the leading protocols in the restaking infrastructure layer, yield aggregation layer, and active validation service layer.

I. Development and Current Status of the Restaking Sector

1. The Advancement of the Restaking Sector

Staking, as the foundational means of ensuring on-chain security under the PoS consensus mechanism, has undergone multi-layered development from the initial native staking to liquid staking, and then to restaking. 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 resulting in low capital efficiency due to assets being completely locked, with staked assets lacking liquidity and composability, thus 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 trading, lending, and liquidity provision within the DeFi ecosystem, significantly enhancing asset utilization efficiency and user returns. However, while liquid staking has improved the liquidity and 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 restaking 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 restaking 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 the need 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 shared validation capabilities without building their own consensus mechanisms, thus forming a market model of security as a service. Among them, liquid restaking is an important branch of the restaking mechanism, which packages restaked assets into liquid derivative tokens, allowing users to enjoy restaking rewards while flexibly utilizing these tokens in DeFi, achieving multi-layered compounding of returns.

2. The Multi-Chain Extension of the Restaking Sector

The restaking mechanism was first scaled in the Ethereum ecosystem, and its rapid development relies on three key elements: modular on-chain architecture, sufficient liquid staked assets (LST), and an active validator network. However, as a single network, Ethereum has certain limitations in its reusable security resources. Emerging projects are beginning to seek to break the constraints of single-chain structures on restaking and explore new paths such as asset collateralization.
Meanwhile, another type of project has chosen to build a native restaking system starting from non-Ethereum ecosystems. A typical example is Babylon, which proposes a staking mechanism design that does not require modifications to the Bitcoin main chain and provides Bitcoin security as a service to other chains. Overall, the restaking ecosystem is evolving from an Ethereum-centered single-chain system to a multi-chain integrated structure.

3. The Centralization Phenomenon in the Restaking Sector

Currently, the restaking 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 data from Defillama, the total TVL of the restaking sector is currently $20.376 billion, with EigenCloud's total locked amount (TVL) at $13.86 billion, ranking first in the restaking sector with a share of 68%.

*Source: Defillama, * https://defillama.com/protocols/restaking
According to the current total TVL rankings in the restaking sector, the top three projects are EigenCloud, deployed on the Ethereum mainnet, leading with a locked position of approximately $13.86 billion; 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 restaking structure.

II. Core Participants in the Restaking Sector

In the following sections, this report will systematically analyze the core projects in the current restaking 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, striving to restore a highly dynamic overview of the restaking sector.

1. Restaking Infrastructure Layer

The restaking infrastructure layer is the cornerstone of the entire restaking 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 restaking platforms and applications but also enhance the scalability and interoperability of the blockchain ecosystem by allowing them to create customized staking and security models. In the following sections, this report will focus on the main projects in the restaking infrastructure layer: EigenCloud, Symbiotic, and Babylon.
1.1 Representative Projects of 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. At the same time, the well-known institution a16z reinvested $70 million in 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 renaming and other measures of EigenCloud also indicate that the platform is actively seeking strategic directions for transformation.
In this report, we will first focus on EigenCloud's role in the restaking system. EigenCloud is the first protocol to propose the concept of restaking in the Ethereum ecosystem, with the core idea of reusing ETH (or liquid staking derivatives such as LST) that has 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 the core architectural design proposed by EigenCloud, aiming to modularly split and open up Ethereum's economic security capabilities. Under the AVS architecture, external protocols or validation services do not need to independently build a complete consensus and economic security mechanism; they can obtain security guarantees close to the Ethereum mainnet level by reusing restaked assets and validator sets.
EigenCloud aggregates validator resources and restaked 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. At the same time, 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 restaking mechanism. Its business model operates as follows:
Stakers restake 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 parties pay fees for the security obtained, which are typically distributed about 90% to stakers, about 5% to AVS node operators, and about 5% retained by the EigenCloud protocol as platform revenue.
Staking Model
EigenCloud introduces a flexible restaking 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 Restaking: Users can directly transfer their natively staked ETH on the Ethereum mainnet to EigenCloud for restaking. This is the most direct and native staking path, with high security but low flexibility.
LST Restaking: Users can deposit LSTs (such as stETH, rETH) obtained through liquid staking protocols into EigenCloud for restaking. This staking model introduces the DeFi layer as an intermediary, achieving a combination of liquidity and restaking rewards, balancing flexibility and profitability.
ETH LP Restaking: Users can also use LP tokens obtained from providing ETH liquidity in DeFi protocols for restaking in EigenCloud. This staking model utilizes DeFi derivative assets that include ETH for restaking, releasing additional value from LP assets.
LSD LP Restaking: LP tokens based on LSD, such as Curve's stETH-ETH LP token, can also be restaked on EigenCloud. This method is the most complex yield stacking path, integrating the yield structures of Ethereum mainnet staking, DeFi liquidity provision, and EigenCloud restaking.
Staking Data
As of the time of publication, EigenCloud's total TVL is $13.86 billion, with 8,465,305 ETH restaked, and 82 AVS integrated. Currently, 87.2% of EigenCloud's restaking market share consists of native restaking, where ETH is used for restaking, while other assets account for only 12.8%.

*Source: Dune, * https://dune.com/hahahash/eigenlayer
A more detailed observation point is that, from the growth trend of the total locked amount (TVL) of native restaked ETH in EigenCloud, from January to June 2024, after EigenCloud experienced explosive growth, its total TVL (which is predominantly native restaking) has remained fluctuating in the range of $8 million, with no significant influx of new capital later on.

*Source: Dune, * https://dune.com/hahahash/eigenlayer
Overall, although EigenCloud occupies a significant market share in terms of data, considering its transformation and TVL trends, its restaking business is facing the following deep-seated challenges:
First, business growth has hit a stagnation bottleneck. According to the data analysis in this report, EigenCloud experienced explosive growth in the first half of 2024, but its TVL has long remained fluctuating within a fixed range, lacking subsequent incremental funds. This state of sluggish growth has forced it to transform through renaming and pivoting towards AI infrastructure and cloud services, indirectly confirming that the pure restaking narrative has lost its appeal.
At the same time, the asset structure is single and liquidity is limited. Although EigenCloud has designed complex LSD and LP restaking 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 restaking appear less cost-effective.
Finally, the premium capacity of the business model is in doubt. Although stakers can receive 90% of the fee distribution, facing the 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 restaking and the endorsement of security cannot continue to improve, the entire restaking ecosystem is likely to become a capital stock game lacking real application support.
1.1.2 Symbiotic
Symbiotic is a modular restaking protocol that supports multiple assets, aiming to provide shared security services for decentralized applications and blockchain networks. Launched in June 2024, its mainnet is deployed on Ethereum. Unlike EigenCloud (which only supports ETH and ETH derivatives 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 restaking mechanism. The core differentiation of Symbiotic lies in its highly modular and cross-chain restaking architecture, where its validation methods, penalty logic, and collateral assets can be freely configured, supporting multi-asset restaking, and modular networks such as Layer2 and oracles can be accessed as needed. It reshapes restaking from another dimension, providing flexible and secure validation services for the entire on-chain world.
Additionally, an interesting observation is that the differentiated strategies between EigenCloud and Symbiotic are also seen as a competition between major VCs. EigenCloud previously rejected an investment from Paradigm and instead chose a16z, prompting Paradigm to turn to Symbiotic. At the same time, Symbiotic has also received support from the co-founder of Lido. Currently, Symbiotic is one of the few leading restaking protocols that have 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, thus achieving higher capital efficiency and security. Symbiotic's business model is based on building a decentralized restaking market that dynamically matches supply and demand for security, with its core revenue sources including:
Security Rent: Networks such as Rollups, data availability layers, oracles, etc., pay fees to Symbiotic to rent its security.
Validator Commission Sharing: Symbiotic can charge fees or commissions 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 the native Ethereum token ETH. Users can deposit various ERC-20 assets such as ETH, staking derivatives, and stablecoins into different staking vaults, each configured with different rules and purposes, supporting different validation services.
In practice, after users lock their assets into the staking vault, these assets are used by nodes in the Symbiotic network to support the security validation of different PoS networks or Layer2 projects. Node operators need to meet certain credibility and staking requirements, and the protocol-managed registration system dynamically manages 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's total TVL is $565 million. However, from the following TVL growth trend chart, it is clear that Symbiotic's TVL growth is similar to that of EigenCloud, showing a downward trend after peaking in 2024 (around $2.5 billion). After the second half of 2025, the TVL decline accelerated, falling to less than one-third of its peak by early 2026. This also reflects that early narratives and incentive-driven funds are gradually withdrawing, while new long-term incremental funds have not entered, significantly weakening Symbiotic's funding base.

*Source: Defillama, * https://defillama.com/protocol/symbiotic
Although Symbiotic initially attracted attention with Paradigm's endorsement and its extremely flexible multi-asset restaking concept, its current data trends reveal 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 cliff-like 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 extends or incentives dilute, Symbiotic's ability to retain short-term hot money is extremely weak, leading to a significant wave of capital withdrawal.
At the same time, there is a disconnect between multi-asset flexibility and real security demand. Although Symbiotic supports restaking 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, leading to the flexibility advantage not translating into real order increments in practical commercial landing.
Symbiotic also faces strategic passivity issues. While EigenCloud has begun to pivot towards AI and cloud computing, Symbiotic remains firmly within the modular restaking 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 reshaping, facing the 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 bring BTC into the staking economy and provide trustless security for multiple PoS networks. Unlike traditional cross-chain bridges or wrapped asset mechanisms, Babylon constructs its staking system based on Bitcoin's native scripting, allowing users to lock BTC directly on the Bitcoin main chain and earn rewards without giving up asset ownership or relying on intermediaries. This mechanism not only preserves the self-custody and non-custodial attributes of BTC but also expands the staking usage paths for Bitcoin, opening up a new direction for the BTCFi ecosystem.
Business Model
Babylon's business model is based on a bilateral market structure, with BTC holders as staking providers earning token incentives by locking assets on one end; on the other end, PoS networks that require security pay fees to the protocol to introduce BTC as a source of restaking 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 rental market.
Staking Model
Babylon utilizes Bitcoin's native smart scripting capabilities to construct a trustless restaking system. When users stake BTC, the funds are locked in time-locked or multi-signature contracts, without needing 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 setting clear rules for penalties and redemptions, forming a trust-minimized staking structure. Currently, users must undergo an unlocking period of about 7 days after staking BTC with Babylon before they can redeem it.
Staking Data
As of now, Babylon has locked approximately 61,063 BTC in the protocol, making it one of the largest BTC restaking protocols currently. Babylon ranks second in TVL among restaking protocols. The total amount of BTC staked by 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.

*Source: Babylon Labs, * btcstaking.babylonlabs.io
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 staking business model. By introducing BTC in a staked state 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, aiming for a more comprehensive development of BTCFi.
Overall, the performance of the leading representative projects in the restaking infrastructure layer shows that the current core issue lies not in the mechanism design or insufficient security supply, but in the difficulty of sustaining 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, their common characteristic is that they have technically aggregated high-level underlying security assets, but at the business level, they generally face pressures of slowing growth, capital withdrawal, or forced transformation.

2. Restaking Yield Aggregation Layer

The core role of the yield aggregation layer is to financialize, liquidate, and standardize restaked assets. Through liquid restaking tokens, positions that were previously limited by unlocking periods and insufficient liquidity are transformed into tradable and composable assets, allowing users to retain exposure to underlying restaking 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 in the restaking system, providing users with more convenient participation paths and yields by aggregating different restaking sources. However, it is important to note that while the yield aggregation layer enhances capital efficiency, it also accelerates risks.
2.1 Representative Projects of the Yield Aggregation Layer
2.2.1 Pendle
Project Overview
Pendle focuses on the tradability of restaking asset yields, allowing already staked or restaked assets to generate tradable yield rights and principal shares after processing. This means that users' yields can not only come from on-chain channels but can also be cashed out or invested in predicting future yields in 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 restaking sector in 2024, Pendle successfully captured the sector's breakout point through its collaboration with EtherFi. After EtherFi launched the liquid staking asset eETH, Pendle quickly launched a PT/YT split 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 in advance or buy yield tokens at a lower price for investment, attracting a large number of arbitrageurs and structured funds, thus driving rapid pool 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 for tradable yields. With the rise of restaking-type assets, Pendle has become an important tool for liquidity providers, arbitrageurs, and structured product teams, providing capabilities for locking in yields in advance and low-risk arbitrage.
In terms of revenue, Pendle generates income through two paths. First, it charges a protocol fee of 3% to 5% on accumulated yields from YT, which is stable and has low correlation with market fluctuations; second, it collects transaction fees from PT/YT trades, which is also a major source of income. Both parts of the revenue are fully returned to locked vePENDLE users, leaving nothing for the protocol team, thus enhancing the holding value of the governance token.
Notably, Pendle has seen exponential growth in trading volume since early 2024. As of now, Pendle's cumulative trading volume has approached $90 billion, with overall growth remaining 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 gradually accumulated alongside the expansion of product use cases and increased user activity.

*Source: app.sentio.xyz, * https://app.sentio.xyz/share/lv18u9fyu1b558xf
Staking Model
Pendle itself does not provide restaking services but collaborates with platforms like EtherFi (eETH) to bring these yield-capable assets onto the Pendle platform. By splitting these assets into principal parts (PT) and future yield parts (YT), Pendle achieves early pricing of restaking yields and liquidity release. Users can choose to sell YT to lock in future restaking yields or buy YT to seek higher yield growth. This mechanism makes Pendle the core platform for trading restaking yields, turning previously hard-to-liquidate future yields into configurable and tradable financial instruments, thus broadening the use cases for restaking assets.
Staking Data
Pendle's total TVL is approximately $3.791 billion, with total revenue of $76.03 million. Notably, Pendle's development has not stopped at the restaking sector. As the platform's users and liquidity continue to expand, Pendle is accelerating its penetration into the broader on-chain yield market. Currently, the assets it supports have covered 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 of yield assets across the chain. 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.

*Source: app.pendle.finance, * https://app.pendle.finance/vependle/overview
Overall, Pendle has evolved from an early yield-splitting protocol into a comprehensive infrastructure for yield pricing and liquidity across the chain. Its sustained growth in trading volume and revenue indicates that Pendle's core value is no longer limited to a single sector or asset type, but lies in constructing a yield market that spans assets and cycles.
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 haSUI. haSUI can further be used to participate in liquidity mining, lending, and derivative-related applications of mainstream DeFi protocols within the Sui ecosystem, enabling staked assets to retain their native staking yields while gaining liquidity and composability, thus enhancing capital utilization efficiency and amplifying overall staking yields.
Haedal's model is similar to the restaking 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 in the ecosystem. Currently, the Sui ecosystem's restaking protocols have not yet formed on a large scale, and in this context, Haedal, as the first liquid restaking platform on Sui, plays a role in promoting the transition of staked assets from static to dynamic. It represents liquid staking and intersects with the restaking sector in both practical functionality and ecological impact, thus this report also includes it in the research scope.
Business Model
Haedal's revenue sources can be divided into three parts: the management fee from staking rewards (approximately 6%); the LP, lending, and trading fees generated by haSUI in external DeFi scenarios; and the 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 foundation 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 to 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 rewards are automatically reflected through this token on a daily compounding basis, requiring no additional actions from users.
In addition to basic staking functions, Haedal also offers diversified yield strategies. Users can deposit haSUI into haVault strategy pools to participate in various combination strategies such as automatic 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, thus obtaining fee income. The protocol also has built-in risk control mechanisms that can timely adjust staking allocations in case of abnormal performance from validator nodes, ensuring asset safety and stable yields.
Staking Data
As of now, Haedal's total TVL is approximately $97 million, with a circulation of over 45.67 million haSUI. The current anchoring exchange rate of haSUI is approximately 1.070282, indicating that users holding haSUI have achieved approximately 7.03% cumulative staking yields.
Haedal's staking return mechanism is that 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 extracting and restaking yields, making it suitable for long-term holders to continuously accumulate returns, reflecting the robustness and transparency of Haedal's staking mechanism.

*Source: haedal.xyz, * https://www.haedal.xyz/stats
Haedal is also upgrading related products, with Haedal Liquidity Vault v2 officially launched to help users achieve long-term sustainable LP yields. 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 released. Haedal's more forward-looking significance lies in pre-setting the infrastructure for financializing staked assets in the Sui ecosystem, and its subsequent growth potential will depend on the expansion of the Sui public chain in DeFi scale and the actual landing of related scenarios.
2.1.3 Jito
Jito is the most systematically influential restaking platform in the Solana network, with its core value lying in capturing the sorting rights revenue (MEV) that originally belonged only to node operators and returning it to stakers. Jito does not introduce additional service validation or protocol guarantees but aims to maximize the value of staked assets by enhancing basic staking yields.
Unlike the Ethereum restaking 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 sorting and incorporates this revenue into the return system of jitoSOL. This mechanism bypasses the complexity of intermediary service layers and realizes an efficient restaking path that directly redistributes the protocol's native revenue structure.
Business Model
Jito's business model consists of two parts: basic staking yields and transaction sorting incentives (MEV). Basic staking yields refer to the network's basic inflation rewards generated after users delegate SOL to Jito validator nodes; transaction sorting incentives (MEV) refer to Jito's design of a dedicated sorting system to manage the order of transactions in each block of the Solana network. This sorting order itself is valuable, as who gets their transaction placed first 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 sorting income, returns 80% to users, i.e., users staking SOL to obtain jitoSOL.
Staking Model
Users can exchange SOL for jitoSOL through Jito's 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, derivative trading, etc., forming a composite model of restaking and reuse.
Jito's mechanism resembles a secondary capture of protocol-native revenue, without additional protocol dependencies or new 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 seamlessly integrate into the DeFi system, thereby constructing a restaking path based on yield stratification.
Currently, Jito's total TVL is approximately $2.026 billion, with an average annual yield of 5.94%, and a total restaking TVL of approximately $46.33 million. The trend of Jito's restaking is shown in the following chart, which overall presents a pattern of phase expansion followed by a decline. Its restaking TVL continued 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 decreased, entering a noticeable decline phase in the second half of 2025, indicating a shift from early rapid expansion to deleveraging and structural adjustment, with the market's allocation attitude towards restaking becoming more cautious.

*Source: Dune, * https://dune.com/jito/jito-restaking
It should be noted that although this report includes Jito in the discussion of restaking, its restaking scale still accounts for a relatively low proportion of its overall business. Currently, the restaking TVL is only about $4.633 million, which is limited, and restaking serves more as a marginal supplement to its ability to reuse staked assets. Overall, Jito's restaking reflects more functional extension and strategic exploration within its system, and its development pace is also more susceptible to changes in market cycles and risk preferences.
2.2.4 EtherFi
EtherFi provides users with a way to automatically integrate Ethereum native staking with EigenCloud restaking 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 restaking system; the eETH or weETH held by users serves as a yield certificate, which can be used in DeFi scenarios for lending, market making, etc., while continuously accumulating underlying staking yields. Compared to traditional restaking, EtherFi encapsulates complex operations at the protocol level, allowing users to automatically enjoy dual yields and on-chain liquidity.
EtherFi's revenue sources include native staking rewards from the Ethereum network and additional yields obtained through EigenCloud's restaking mechanism. The platform also charges a certain percentage from users' staking yields as platform revenue. 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 experienced phase expansion in mid-2025, followed by a decline and entering a range of fluctuations.

*Source: exponential.fi, * https://defillama.com/protocol/tvl/ether.fi-stake
It is noteworthy that besides laying out in the restaking sector, EtherFi is currently also accelerating the expansion of crypto applications into real-world consumption scenarios, continuously broadening its utility beyond the restaking 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-generating assets for instant consumption, enjoying up to 5% cashback. Additionally, users depositing LiquidUSD or LiquidETH can receive a liquidity reward of 0.15 ETHFI daily for every $1,000 held. This series of actions indicates that ether.fi is gradually expanding from restaking to applications in consumer finance and Web3 scenarios.

*Source: ether.fi, * https://www.ether.fi/app/cash
Interestingly, the ether.fi 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 use phase, while the scale of cashback is relatively controllable, suggesting that the current incentives mainly serve to acquire and retain users, reflecting that its payment scenario is in a steady growth phase. Notably, from the usage situation, cardholders primarily engage in small, exploratory consumption, with transaction frequencies concentrated around amounts of $6 to $50.

*Source: Dune, * https://dune.com/ether_fi/etherfi-cash
Overall, EtherFi is gradually transforming from a single restaking yield aggregation platform into a crypto financial entry point with real payment capabilities. Current transaction data indicates that this model has entered the actual use phase, but overall, it remains focused on small, high-frequency, exploratory consumption.

3. Active Validation Service Layer of Restaking

The active validation service layer, or AVS layer, is designed to allow infrastructures and protocols that do not need to build their own validation networks to share the economic security of underlying staked assets through the integration of restaking mechanisms, thereby reducing security startup costs and enhancing attack resistance. Currently, only a few infrastructure modules that are highly sensitive to security and have the ability to pay continuously truly require Ethereum-level economic security, and the development of the AVS layer is noticeably lagging behind that of the infrastructure layer and yield aggregation layer. In this context, this report selects the three most prominent AVS from the leading EigenCloud ecosystem for analysis: EigenDA, Cyber, and Lagrange.
3.1 Representative Projects of the AVS Service Layer
3.1.1 EigenDA
EigenDA is the first AVS launched by EigenLabs, specifically designed to provide cheap and massive storage space for various Rollups. In the blockchain world, data availability (DA) acts like a cloud hard drive for public ledgers, where Rollups need to back up transaction data to this hard drive to ensure that anyone can retrieve and verify the authenticity of transactions at any time. The emergence of EigenDA aims to provide this hard drive with Ethereum-level security while being faster and cheaper.
Traditional blockchains typically require every node to download and store all data completely, which, while secure, is very congested and expensive. EigenDA adopts a smarter sharding approach, using mathematical principles to cut data into many fragments and distribute them to different nodes in the network. Each node only needs to store a small portion of the data, but as long as enough nodes are online, the system can reconstruct the original data like a puzzle. This design allows EigenDA to break free from traditional performance bottlenecks, enabling its throughput to reach Web2-level standards.
Its greatest advantage lies in directly renting the vast existing credit system of Ethereum. Through EigenCloud, users who have already staked ETH on Ethereum can choose to restake these assets to EigenDA's validators. This means that if someone wants to attack EigenDA, they are essentially challenging the security barrier of ETH worth hundreds of billions of dollars. For Rollup developers, this saves them the enormous cost of building a secure network from scratch, directly achieving a "move-in ready" level of security.
In terms of commercialization strategy, EigenDA behaves more like a flexible cloud service provider. Traditional Ethereum storage prices fluctuate dramatically with network congestion, while EigenDA allows project parties to reserve bandwidth in advance. Moreover, it is extremely open in terms of payment methods; project parties can pay fees not only in ETH but even in their own issued tokens.
EigenDA is the largest AVS in the entire restaking ecosystem. As of now, it has locked over 4 million ETH in restaked assets, attracting over 120,000 addresses to participate, dominating in both capital depth and network distribution.

*Source: app.eigenlayer, * https://app.eigenlayer.xyz/avs
However, it must be objectively noted that EigenDA is still in the early stages of commercialization. Although it has the largest staked assets on paper among AVS projects, the actual number of penalty cases is zero, indicating that its security constraint mechanisms remain more at the institutional planning level and have not yet undergone real large-scale malicious attack tests.
3.1.2 Cyber
Cyber introduces restaking security through Cyber MACH as an application-oriented AVS. Its core logic lies in providing additional validation and rapid confirmation capabilities for chain states while keeping the OP Stack execution layer unchanged, thereby enhancing the interaction experience and security in social and AI scenarios. This model reflects the practical use of AVS at the application layer; it does not replace the existing Rollup security model but serves as an additional security layer accessed as needed.
As of now, its restaked asset scale is approximately 3.49 million ETH, with about 114,000 addresses participating in staking and 45 node operators, placing its security budget in the first tier among application-type AVS. However, at the same time, its punishable assets remain at zero, indicating that the relevant penalty and constraint mechanisms have not yet entered a verifiable stage in real operations, reflecting the general lag of application-type AVS in implementing security mechanisms.
More concerning is that Cyber's project advancement pace has noticeably slowed down. Its official website and white paper content are still at the first quarter of 2025. This means that despite Cyber absorbing a certain scale of restaking security on paper, how to convert this security budget into sustainable product capabilities and commercial value still has considerable uncertainty.
3.1.3 Lagrange
Lagrange is a decentralized computing network aimed at zero-knowledge proof generation, with the core goal of providing high reliability and high availability proof generation services for Rollups, cross-chain protocols, and complex on-chain computing scenarios. Unlike infrastructure-type AVS like EigenDA that directly guarantee chain state security, Lagrange addresses the more fundamental aspects in computation-intensive scenarios, namely whether proofs can be generated timely, correctly, and continuously.
In the AVS architecture, Lagrange imposes economic security on ZKProver nodes to constrain nodes to complete computational tasks on time and maintain network activity. As of now, Lagrange has absorbed approximately 3.05 million ETH in restaked assets, with about 141,000 addresses participating in staking and 66 node operators.
Lagrange exemplifies the typical use of AVS in computational services, where restaking security does not directly create demand but provides reliable delivery guarantees for existing demand. It is important to emphasize that the core competitiveness of ZK Prover networks ultimately depends on performance, latency, and unit costs, with restaking security playing more of a stabilizing role rather than a decisive advantage. Therefore, Lagrange's long-term sustainability still heavily relies on whether ZK applications continue to expand and whether proof services can form a clear and sustainable paid market. This also reflects a common characteristic of computational AVS: ample security budgets, but the commercialization conversion paths still require time for validation.
In summary, the core issue exposed by the AVS layer is not whether restaking security is strong enough, but whether high-level economic security is "necessarily used" in reality. From the latest operational situation, it can be observed that leading AVS have generally absorbed millions of ETH in restaked assets, but this security supply has not simultaneously translated into clear and sustainable demand. On one hand, the punishable assets of leading AVS have long been zero, and security constraints remain more at the institutional and expectation levels; on the other hand, whether in data availability, application-type Rollups, or ZK computing services, their real payment capabilities and commercial closed loops are still in the early validation stage. This means that the current AVS layer resembles an early configuration of security rather than a security demand driven by application pressures.

III. Vulnerabilities and Risk Points of the Restaking System

1. Risks of Insufficient Demand for Shared Security

The core of shared security in restaking lies in replacing self-built security with paid rental security, thereby reducing the comprehensive costs during the cold start phase. New chains often lack sufficient validator ecosystems and market trust in the early stages, and building their own security requires bearing multiple costs such as inflation incentives, node operations, and security endorsements. At this stage, inheriting the main chain's security through restaking protocols indeed helps concentrate resources on product and ecosystem construction.
However, the premise for this model to hold is that the marginal cost of renting security is significantly lower than the overall cost of self-built security, and that external security can have a verifiable positive impact on user growth or capital retention. As networks enter the mid to late stages, when income, inflation models, and validation systems gradually mature, project parties often have the conditions to internalize security budgets, and the relative attractiveness of shared security subsequently declines, exhibiting a demand characteristic that decreases as projects grow.
On the other hand, from the overall market structure perspective, the establishment of demand for shared security implicitly assumes the continuous emergence of a large number of new chains or networks in the on-chain ecosystem, i.e., the expansion scenario of "ten thousand chains issuing tokens." However, this situation has clearly weakened at the current stage, with the number of new public chains and application chains being issued and the scale of financing continuously declining, and development and capital resources accelerating towards a few mature ecosystems. Project parties are more inclined to build applications within existing main chains or Layer2 systems rather than restarting a new chain that requires comprehensive investment from consensus, security to ecology.
In this context, the demand foundation for providing generic shared security to new chains shrinks accordingly. This means that the market demand related to shared security is shrinking and is unlikely to form sustained new demand, with its application scope gradually converging.

2. Risks of Security Dilution under Financial Leverage

From a mechanism design perspective, restaking enhances capital utilization efficiency by reusing the economic security already accumulated in the main chain, allowing the same staked asset to simultaneously provide validation support for multiple protocols or services. In theory, this approach is seen as an optimization path that replaces redundant construction with vertical division of labor, helping to lower the threshold for individual protocols to independently bear security costs and enhancing the overall capital efficiency of the system at specific stages.
However, combining the actual operational situations of the infrastructure layer, yield aggregation layer, and AVS layer discussed earlier, it can be observed that this efficiency enhancement is gradually developing into implicit leverage amplification in reality. Currently, multiple protocols often share the same batch of collateral assets and validator sets, essentially forming a structure where one pool of funds corresponds to multiple security commitments. As the number of connected protocols continues to increase, the actual attack resistance of unit assets is continuously diluted, leading to a decrease in the security margin.
At the same time, the long-term punishable assets of leading AVS are close to zero, indicating that the staked scale on paper has not effectively translated into executable economic constraints. In this structure, although the restaking system nominally enhances capital efficiency, its security guarantees remain more at the expectation level. In the event of extreme situations, the actual defensive capability may be weaker than the security scale reflected on paper, thereby exposing restaking to the risk of excessive leverage of security in the pursuit of efficiency.

3. Risks of High Concentration of Trust

At the same time, in actual operations, the power of validation nodes in the restaking system is highly concentrated. This structural imbalance leads to an increasing Matthew effect among validators, where leading nodes gain priority in AVS collaborations due to brand, capital, and historical credibility, further accumulating more income and governance rights, thus consolidating their monopoly position. The operational stability of some key AVS systems has become highly dependent on a few large validators. If any of them experiences downtime, double-signing, or collusion, it could potentially cause a cascading collapse across multiple AVS.
As of now, EigenCloud still holds over 60% market share in the restaking field. This dominant position gives its protocol decision-making influence an exceptionally large impact, forcing many projects to build around EigenCloud, further amplifying its leverage effect on the overall security of the ecosystem. If the platform experiences smart contract vulnerabilities, governance attacks, or policy changes, the chain reaction will be difficult to isolate. Although protocols like Babylon are attempting to penetrate this market and introduce innovations such as Bitcoin staking to weaken centralization, their user base and ecological depth are still far inferior to EigenCloud. This indicates that the current ecosystem has not yet established an effective multi-polar check-and-balance mechanism, and the restaking system still faces systemic risks triggered by single-point failures of leading entities.

4. Weaknesses in the Liquidation Chain and Negative Feedback

As restaking protocols become increasingly complex, liquidation risks are emerging as one of the core challenges facing the entire ecosystem. Different protocols exhibit significant differences in their reduction mechanisms and liquidity designs, making it difficult for the restaking system to form universal assessment standards. This structural heterogeneity not only increases the threshold for cross-protocol integration but also weakens the unified response capability of the liquidation market to risks. Currently, there is a lack of an effective cross-protocol risk liquidation mechanism, placing the entire restaking system in a potential state of systemic loss of control without unified credit anchoring or risk isolation. Different protocols adopt their own reduction trigger mechanisms, validator distribution logic, and collateral liquidity strategies, leading to the formation of island-like risk structures on-chain, making coordinated governance in cross-protocol scenarios challenging.

5. Risks of Liquidity Mismatch and Yield Volatility

Restaking takes already liquid staking derivatives or native ETH and re-stakes them into external services, supporting users' participation in lending, trading, and yield aggregation operations, seemingly enhancing capital efficiency. However, the actual exit cycle of the underlying staked assets remains lagging. For example, EigenCloud's restaked assets require a mandatory custody period of 14 days before they can be withdrawn. This mismatch between exit cycles and liquidity does not manifest as an issue when market sentiment is stable, but once a trust event occurs, it can easily trigger a liquidity run. Restaking yields do not come from a single source but are driven by multiple factors, including ETH main chain staking yields, AVS incentive distributions, node operation profit sharing, and additional returns from participating in DeFi protocols. This multi-source driven yield structure increases yield rate volatility, making it difficult for investors to assess their real yield risk ratios, thus complicating stable holding or allocation decisions.

IV. Conclusion

Currently, the restaking sector has shifted from early rapid growth to a stage where structural issues are gradually emerging. On one hand, it quickly rose as an extension of Ethereum's staking mechanism, seen as a new way to release on-chain trust capital; on the other hand, the actual operational mechanisms continuously expose issues of centralization and risk layering, posing challenges of limited resources and growth bottlenecks for the entire sector.
The market demand related to shared security is shrinking, and it is difficult to form sustained new demand, with its application scope gradually converging. At the same time, there are risks of security dilution under financial leverage. In most mainstream protocols, the concentration of validator delegation continues to rise, with leading nodes bearing almost the entire trust weight of the system, and the design of protocol layers often relies on a single governance structure and highly centralized authority control. This structural defect not only undermines the original intention of redistributing trust but also, to some extent, forms a new center of concentrated power. Restaking, as an independent sector, is experiencing a cyclical retreat, with the market not only losing confidence in a single project but also beginning to question the efficiency and sustainability of the entire shared security model.
Due to the persistence of this situation, leading projects are actively exploring diversified paths. The most representative, EigenCloud, is no longer limited to the positioning of a restaking protocol; its new positioning is attempting to take on a broader decentralized computing resource market and integrate with the X402 sector. This transformation indicates that EigenCloud is seeking to establish itself as a more comprehensive infrastructure layer. Meanwhile, projects like Ether.fi are also beginning to expand into non-staking directions, attempting to penetrate payment and other broader use scenarios, reflecting the sector's adjustments and shifts away from a single staking logic.
However, whether in staking, restaking, or liquid restaking, it is challenging to escape dependence on the price of underlying assets. Once the price of native tokens declines, stakers' principal suffers losses, and the multi-layered structure of the restaking system will further amplify risk exposure. This risk layering structure has gradually emerged after the market boom in 2024, raising doubts about the restaking model.
From a future potential perspective, the restaking sector is seeking possible paths to evolve from high-yield tools to underlying credit protocols through its growing pains. The effectiveness of this reshaping largely depends on whether it can break through in two directions: internally, the market is observing whether restaking can achieve deeper integration with stablecoin mechanisms, attempting to construct a foundational infrastructure similar to on-chain benchmark interest rates by outputting standardized underlying security and expected yield rates, thereby providing a low-volatility, liquidity-deep yield anchor for digital assets; externally, restaking has the potential to become a connecting hub between decentralized ecosystems and traditional financial credit. If it can effectively address the challenges of risk quantification and compliance integration, it may transform Ethereum's consensus security into a credit endorsement understandable by traditional capital, accommodating RWA and other institutional-grade assets.
Overall, the restaking 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.