Liquid restaking is gaining momentum as demand for yields jump and as the crypto bull run continues. The biggest players in this restaking industry have grown to become some of the biggest players in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) industry.
Data compiled by DeFi Llama shows that EigenLayer has gained over $11 billion in assets, making it the second-biggest DeFi platform in the world after Lido. It has become bigger than DeFi pioneers like AAVE, Maker, JustLend, and Uniswap.
Other restaking networks are also gaining steam. Ether.fi has added over $3.1 billion in assets, making it the 12th-biggest DeFi platform in the world. It has gained thousands of users from around the world.
Renzo, a fairly new platform, has added more than $1.8 billion in assets while Puffer Finance has more than $1.3 billion.
Restaking is, therefore, becoming the fastest-growing industry in decentralized finance. For starters, staking is the process where crypto holders delegate their tokens and earn a reward every month. According to StakingRewards, the global staking market cap stands at over $348 billion while the global rewards have jumped to more than $5.85 billion.
Developers have worked to solve the challenges with staking. The first solution that came up was liquid staking, which has grown over the years. Liquid staking gives holders flexibility of unlocking the value of staked assets for use as collateral.
Restaking, on the other hand, is an improvement of the traditional staking process since it lets users stake assets that have already been staked. As a result, users can make more returns. In Ethereum’s case, one can turn their tokens into liquid tokens and then restake them..
Analysts believe that both restaking and liquid restaking trend will continue gaining momentum as the crypto bull run continues. In addition to Ethereum, there is a possibility that developers will launch restaking platforms for other cryptocurrencies like Solana, Avalanche, and Polygon.