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Popular liquid staking platform Ether.fi has maintained its lead as the top platform in the sector, with over $3.74 billion in total value locked (TVL).
According to data from the block, the platform is managing over 1.03 million ETH, significantly higher than its competitors. The closest to this is the Renzo protocol, which manages $2.9 billion in user deposits as of April 9—a hefty difference.
The liquid restaking sector has witnessed massive growth over the past months. The surge has been primarily attributed to deposits on the EigenLayer protocol. Ether.fi alone has received more than $1.5 billion worth of deposits over the past month.
Last month, Ether.fi saw 120,000 ETH staked from an address owned by Tron founder Justin Sun.
Ether.fi is currently hosting a staking campaign dubbed “staking frens” in a bid to further bolster its TVL. A user who stakes 1 ETH will be rewarded with 1 ETHFI, the platform’s native token, every day until the campaign ends on April 18. Furthermore, stakers will also earn a share of $500K USD worth of ZK tokens.
Ether.fi lets users access restaking yields via the EigenLayer protocol. Built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, the EigenLayer protocol allows users to stake their ETH or Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) across multiple protocols.
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Liquid restaking through EigenLayer offers the dual benefit of participating in its diverse services while retaining the liquidity and accessibility of users’ ETH capital. By continuing to accept ether deposits, these protocols re-stake them and issue derivative tokens, such as Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs).
This provides users additional incentives to engage with the ecosystem, which in turn draws in deposits on LRTs like Ether.fi, further boosting the TVL.
LRT protocols also present a viable alternative for users lacking the 32 ETH required for native or direct staking. This accessibility has been a contributing factor to the massive asset accumulation within the top protocols, which now totals $9.7 billion. This figure represents over two-thirds of the TVL on EigenLayer, which stands at $13.58 billion.
Amidst this growing demand for LRT protocols, Google Could has launched its EigenLayer mainnet node operator. It is currently listed as a node operator on the Goerli testnet for EigenLayer.
Read more: DeFi ecosystem sees shift as liquid staking outperforms lending