How Ether.fi Saved TVL When Restaking Lost Its Luster

How Ether.fi Held TVL When Restaking Fell Out of Popularity

Market leader Ether.fi has listed 2.6 million ETH on its platform and is aiming to become a neobank.

Oliver Knight | Edited by Benjamin Schiller on March 20, 2025, 17:37 UTC

Key points:

• Ether.fi has become the leading protocol in the restaking space, raising 2.6 million ETH in deposits.
• The company aims to become a neobank to compete with institutions like Revolut and eventually offer services in the US.
• Ether.fi CEO Silagadze attributes the negative sentiment towards Ethereum to constant attacks from Solana representatives.

A year ago, restaking was considered one of the hottest trends in the crypto space, with projects like EigenLayer being seen as the next big thing.

Fast forward to mid-2025: the total value locked (TVL) in the sector has declined and interest in dedicated farms has waned.

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Despite all the difficulties, the Ether.fi market continues to show stability, helping users earn income through liquid staking tokens (LST) that can be used in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

Now Ether.fi plans to expand its horizons and become a neobank for crypto companies and users.

Ether.fi Leadership

Cayman Islands-based Ether.fi took advantage of its position as one of the pioneers in liquid restaking by launching a lucrative points farm where early adopters earned points that could be converted into token airdrops.

During the first 10 weeks of 2024, the amount of ETH staked increased from 45,000 ETH to 808,000 ETH. Ether.fi currently has 2.58 million ETH staked, while its closest competitor, Renzo, has about 380,000 ETH.

In dollar terms, Ether.fi's TVL is about $5 billion. That's down from a December peak of $9.4 billion, but only because of the ETH price drop, not because of significant withdrawals.

Ether.fi actively engages with its users in an effort to retain them.

“We probably know half of TVL,” Silagadze added. “We know who they are and we are in touch with them, we have constant conversations.”

In contrast, Renzo has seen over 60% of its ETH withdrawn from the platform since July last year, with its TVL dropping from 1 million ETH to 378,000 ETH, according to DefiLlama data.

From Restaking Protocol to Neobank

For Silagadze, the restaking product serves as a tool to attract users and capital, while the company's main goal is to become a neobank capable of competing with players like Revolut.

“For us, staking was simply a way to increase TVL and expand our user base,” Silagadze told CoinDesk. “The ultimate goal is to create an integrated suite of products that will allow users to completely abandon traditional banks and operate on their own crypto platform.”

In September, Ether.fi introduced the Visa “Cash” card on the Scroll network, and Silagadze is confident that this will become the company's main source of income.

Neobank has become quite a popular term in the crypto industry lately. Lending platform Nexo rebranded itself as a neobank last year, and there was also the stealth launch of Dakota, a crypto app that will offer banking services to crypto depositors.

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