The restaking sector is now the sixth largest among all DeFi project categories, driven by notable growth in the TVL of the EigenLayer protocol.
The EigenLayer restaking protocol, operating on Ethereum, surged to fourth place in the total value locked (TVL) and reached $7.01 billion, DefiLlama reported. Since the beginning of February, the protocol’s TVL skyrocketed by almost $5 billion, pushing the restaking sector to the sixth position in terms of funds among all DeFi protocol categories.
EigenLayer experienced its most active growth phase from February 5 to 9, coinciding with the temporary lifting of restrictions on the volume of staked assets by the project team. As a result, the TVL surged by 181% during this period. Although a new limit on asset volume for staking took effect on February 9, the project team intends to completely eliminate this restriction in the future.
Restaking protocols enable reinvestment of LST tokens acquired from initial crypto staking, such as stETH, rETH6, sfrxETH, mETH, and LsETH. This approach leads to higher overall staking revenue and enhances the liquidity of LST tokens.
Liquid staking protocols (LSTfi) have a TVL of $42.5 billion at the time of writing, making them the top category of DeFi projects. LSTfi protocols are poised to dominate the DeFi ecosystem in 2023, particularly with the successful transition of the Ethereum blockchain network to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
