Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
In April, ChainCatcher sorted out the re-staking agreements and LRT agreements on Ethereum, "With frequent capital support and projects airdropping one after another, the re-staking LRT track has become a "new holy land for gold digging", including EigenLayer and the LRT protocols based on it, such as Renzo, Ether.fi, Kelp DAO, EigenPie, YieldNest, Swell, Pendle Finance, etc.
Although the expectations of Renzo's token issuance and EigenLayer's airdrop have been realized, the market heat of the re-staking track has remained in the past three months. The "points war + one fish, two meals a day" is still craze in the crypto community, and large-scale financing of tens of millions of levels often occurs.
For example, on June 18, Renzo announced the completion of a $17 million financing led by Galaxy Ventures and others; on June 11, the re-pledge project Symbiotic announced the completion of a $5.8 million seed round of financing, led by Paradigm and Cyber Fund.
Data shows that 16.3% of all staked ETH has participated in re-staking of Eigenlayer, Karak_Network, etc.
Perhaps because of the opportunity to re-stake wealth, the narrative position of the re-staking track has been overflowing recently, from the main position of Ethereum to Bitcoin, Solana and other ecosystems.
It is reported that at least 6 teams in the Solana ecosystem are building the Solana re-staking project.
Recently, there have been two financings of more than 10 million yuan in the Bitcoin ecosystem. On May 30, Babylon completed a $70 million financing led by Paradigm; on July 2, Bitcoin re-pledge agreement Lombard completed a $16 million seed round of financing, led by Polychain Capital.
The three major re-staking protocols on Ethereum: EigenLayer, Symbiotic, and Karak Network
EigenLayer airdrop tokens are controversial because they are not transferable
As the pioneer of the Restaking concept, EigenLayer has always been a leading project in the restaking track. However, since EigenLayer announced the EIGEN token economic model on April 30 and stated that the airdropped tokens are not transferable, it has triggered a series of public opinion storms.
What users complain about the most is that EigenLayer stated in the white paper that the EIGEN token initially restricted the right to transfer and did not support user transfer or trading. This means that users cannot buy, sell or trade EIGEN tokens in the secondary market.
The official explanation is that it is due to lack of liquidity, but in the eyes of users, this is undoubtedly the project party playing rogue. The stablecoin Ethena project, which just completed the airdrop, posted on social media "Tokens are transferable, we love you" as a sarcasm.
In addition to the non-transferability of tokens, EigenLayer also restricted the user's IP during the airdrop, which made users even more dissatisfied. This was because EigenLayer did not use IP restrictions on the early pledge deposit page, and only announced the IP restrictions when the airdrop was released, making participating users feel like they were being abandoned.
However, judging from the changes in data, the public opinion about the airdrop did not affect the TVL on EigenLayer. On the contrary, it increased, from a peak of US$14 billion on May 9 to US$19 billion on June 16, and has now fallen back to US$14.9 billion.
EigenLayer supports native re-staking and liquidity re-staking: 68% of assets are native ETH and 32% are LST. Currently, EL has about 161,000 re-stakers, but about 67.6% (about $10.3 billion) of assets are entrusted to only 1,500 operators.
On July 3, EigenLayer posted on the social platform X that "major projects will be advanced in Q3." Community users speculated that it is very likely that EIGEN tokens will support transactions.
As of July 12, EIGEN tokens are still not transferable or tradeable, and are priced at $5.39 on the over-the-counter secondary points trading market Whalesmarket.
Symbiotic, a new re-staking project backed by Lido and Paradigm
When EigenLayer was caught in a public opinion storm due to its airdrop rules, on May 15, it was revealed that the co-founders of Lido and Paradigm were secretly funding a new project, Symbiotic, to compete in the re-staking track. In the eyes of the community, the timing of the emergence of re-staking Symbiotic is more like a counterattack against EigenLayer's monopoly.
On June 11, Symbiotic announced its official launch and the completion of a US$5.8 million seed round of financing, led by Paradigm and Cyber Fund.
Among them, Cyber Fund, Symbiotic’s second largest investor, was co-founded by Lido co-founders Konstantin Lomashuk and Vasiliy Shapovalov, and the Symbiotic platform publicly stated that it supports users to use Lido’s stETH and other assets that are natively incompatible with EigenLayer for re-staking.
Therefore, Symbiotic is also considered to be Lido's replacement in the re-staking track and a direct competitor of EigenLayer.
Unlike EigenLayer, which only supports ETH and its (LSD-type ETH) derivatives, Symbiotic supports a wider variety of re-pledge assets, supporting the deposit of any ERC-20 token as re-pledge. For example, re-pledge assets not only support Lido's stETH, cbETH and other LSD pledge certificate assets, but also support the stablecoin protocol Ethena's governance token ENA and stablecoin USDe, etc.
This means that crypto protocols can launch native staking for their own native tokens through the Symbiotic platform to increase network security.
In terms of product form, Symbiotic supports customization based on the business needs of developers. For example, when using Symbiotic's protocol or new network, you can choose its pledge asset type, node operator, reward and reduction mechanism, etc. Eigenlayer adopts a centralized management method, with the official management of the ETH pledge delegation and the node operator verifying various AVS.
With the support of Lido and Paradigm, Symbiotic has deposited more than $1 billion worth of crypto assets in just one month since its launch.
As of July 12, the TVL of the Symbiotic platform was US$1.09 billion, of which the value of wstETH deposited in Lido was US$760 million, accounting for approximately 70% of the TVL.
Currently, LRT protocols such as Ether.fi, Renzo, YieldNest, Swell, and Pendle Finance have been integrated with Symbiotic, supporting users to deposit assets on LRT to earn Symbiotic points.
Mellow, a LRT protocol based on Symbiotic
Mellow was originally a liquidity solution and a partner of the Lido Alliance, supporting users to stake ETH on the platform to obtain stETH and earn additional Mellow staking points. In addition, Mellow also helps Lido operators launch their own LRT to improve the availability of stETH and increase income for Lido DAO members.
On June 4, Mellow announced its partnership with Symbiotic to launch as a modular LRT liquidity re-staking project in its ecosystem.
Compared with common LRT protocols, Mellow is more like a modular LRT infrastructure that allows anyone to deploy or create LRTs with different risk or return ratios, such as traditional hedge funds, staking providers (such as Lido), etc. It supports staking users to choose different risk configurations according to their needs to achieve flexible risk management and return optimization.
For users, they can directly deposit ETH into the Mellow platform, which will automatically transfer ETH to Lido. Users will receive stETH and deposit stETH into Symbiotic. Users who deposit ETH in Mellow can get double points from Symbiotic + Mellow platforms at the same time.
On July 15, the TVL on the Mellow platform was $488 million, with 37 million Symbiotic points earned.
Karak Network is a re-staking protocol that supports multiple asset types and multi-chain deployment
The working principle of Karak Network is similar to the Eigenlayer protocol, except that its AVS service is called distributed security service DSS, and it also launched its own Layer2 network K2.
Unlike Eigenlayer, Karak aims to support re-pledge of any asset. Currently, the re-pledge assets supported on the platform include ETH, various LST and LRT assets, and stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, DAI, and USDe.
In addition, Karak is deployed on multiple chains and is designed to be able to be deposited on any chain. It has been deployed on Ethereum, Arbitrum, BSC, Blast, Mantle, etc. Users can deposit assets according to the multi-chain distribution of their assets.
However, the TVL on the Karak platform has exceeded US$1 billion and does not currently support new deposits.
Bitcoin on-chain re-staking protocols: Babylon, Lombard, BounceBit
Bitcoin re-staking protocol Babylon
Babylon is a Bitcoin-based re-staking protocol that introduces a staking function for Bitcoin, allowing BTC holders to trustlessly stake their assets in other protocols or services that require security and trust, thereby obtaining PoS staking income and governance rights. It also delivers Bitcoin security to various middleware, data availability layers, side chains and other protocols, allowing them to enjoy Bitcoin-level security at a lower cost.
From the perspective of business scope, Babylon covers two aspects: first, BTC holders can pledge BTC to provide security and trust layers for other protocols and earn profits from them; second, it allows PoS chains or other new protocols in the Bitcoin ecosystem to use BTC pledgers as verification nodes to improve security and efficiency.
Babylon co-founder once said in an interview with ChainCatcher that in terms of working mechanism, Babylon is consistent with Ethereum's re-staking protocol EigenLayer, but because Bitcoin does not support smart contracts, Babylon needs to do one more step than EigenLayer to make non-staking Bitcoins become stakeable before they can be re-staking.
On May 30, Babylon announced the completion of a $70 million financing led by Paradigm. According to Rootdata data, as of July 12, Babylon's public financing amount has accumulated to $96 million, with investors including Paradigm, Polychain Capital, Framework Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Binance Labs and other well-known capitals.
Currently, users can experience the process of staking BTC through the Babylon Testnet4 test.
Liquidity re-pledge protocol based on Babylon
1. Lombard with $16 million in seed round financing
Lombard is a liquidity re-pledge protocol built on Babylon. On July 2, it announced the completion of a $16 million seed round of financing led by Polychain Capital, with participation from BabylonChain, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Nomad Capital, and others.
The relationship between Lombard and Babylon is similar to that between Renzo and EigenLayer. The BTC that users stake on Lombard will be automatically re-staken on the Babylon platform to earn returns.
The Lombard platform uses LBTC to release the liquidity of BTC pledged in Babylon. That is, when users deposit BTC on the Lombard platform, they will receive an equal proportion of LBTC, a re-pledged certificate asset. The LBTC held can be used in DeFi protocols, such as lending, trading, and staking, to improve the efficiency of fund use.
Currently, users can apply for the waiting list for white test using their email address on the Lombard platform.
2、Lorenzo
Lorenzo is also a Bitcoin liquidity re-pledge protocol based on Babylon. Through Lorenzo, users can deposit BTC directly into Babylon. The platform has been supported by Binance Labs.
On May 28, Lorenzo announced the launch of the pre-staking Babylon event. Users can stake BTC on the pre-staking Babylon event page to obtain stBTC. All BTC received by Lorenzo will be staked as soon as Babylon goes online.
Currently, users can earn both Lorenzo and Babylon points by staking BTC on Lorenzo.
Bitcoin Re-staking Chain BounceBit
BounceBit is a BTC re-pledge chain designed specifically for Bitcoin. Its main products include BounceBit Portal, BounceBit Chain, and BounceClub. BounceBit Portal is the user interaction portal, BounceClub aims to become a combined ecosystem of CeFi and DeFi, and BounceBit Chain is the main module of the re-pledge function.
BounceBit Chain is designed as a carrier for realizing the re-staking function in the BounceBit ecosystem. It is protected by the Bitcoin staked by validators and BounceBit's native token BB. Middleware such as cross-chain bridges and oracles can gain security by introducing BounceBit's liquidity.
Specifically, after users transfer native assets to BounceBit, new B-Token assets will be minted. Taking BTC as an example, after users deposit BTC, they will obtain BBTC assets operating on the BounceBit mainnet.
Currently, BBTC assets can be used for two main on-chain activities: one is to use BBTC+BB to participate in node staking in BounceBit's hybrid staking mode. The LST tokens generated can be used for further re-staking activities to amplify the staking returns. The second is that BBTC can be used to interact with various DeFi applications on the chain to obtain income.
In April, BounceBit announced the completion of a strategic round of financing invested by Binance Labs. As early as February, it announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing, with investors including Blockchain Capital, Bankless Ventures, NGC Ventures, DeFiance Capital, OKX Ventures, etc.
On July 12, BB was quoted at $0.4 and FDV was $800 million.
Solana Ecosystem Restaking Protocol: Solayer, Cambrian, Picasso
Liquidity Re-Pledge Protocol Solayer
Solayer is a re-staking protocol for the Solana ecosystem that supports SOL holders to stake their assets to other protocols or DApp services within the Solana ecosystem that require security and trust, thereby obtaining more PoS staking income. Its function is similar to EigenLayer.
On July 2, it announced the completion of the Builder Round of financing. The specific investment amount was not disclosed. Investors included Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Solend founder Rooter, Tensor co-founder Richard Wu, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, etc. It was previously reported that three VCs familiar with the situation said Solayer hopes to complete an $8 million seed round of financing at a valuation of $80 million. Rachel Chu of Solayer Labs said that it is close to raising $10 million, of which Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko participated.
Currently, Solayer supports users to deposit native SOL, mSOL, JitoSOL and other assets. On July 15, the TVL on the Solayer platform exceeded US$105 million, of which SOL accounted for about 60%.
Re-pledge agreement in financing negotiations Cambrian
Cambrian is also a re-staking protocol for the Solana ecosystem, supporting the staking of SOL and LST assets to middleware or Dapp applications to earn more income.
It is reported that Cambrian founder Gennady Evstratov said that the team is finalizing a $2.5 million financing. Three investors said the valuation is about $25 million. Cambrian plans to launch a re-staking network at the end of the second quarter or the beginning of the third quarter, launch a points plan and issue coins.
As of July 15, Cambrian has not yet launched any staking products.
Picasso
Picasso was originally a cross-chain protocol of the Polkadot ecosystem. On January 28, it announced the launch of SOL's re-staking service to support SOL and LST liquid staking assets for protecting AVS (active verification services) such as middleware, dApps and L2 Rollups.
Currently, the re-pledge product on Picasso supports re-pledge of SOL and LST assets such as JitoSOL, mSOL, and bSOL. However, the current re-pledged assets participating in the lock-up on the platform are only 3.75 million US dollars.
