Ether.fi exits restaking as Lido maintains 29.7% staking share

Ether.fi is fully removing its last structural tie to EigenLayer by year-end, a decision driven by the collapse of restaking economics. As of August, less than 1% of ether.fi assets remained restaked, and the company now describes itself as a crypto neobank focused on card spending and tokenized stocks. This pivot comes after weekly restaking fees dropped to just $99,977 for $10 billion secured, a figure that pales against liquid staking’s $27.35 million in fees for $51.87 billion secured. On that basis, ordinary staking earns roughly 53 times more per dollar secured than restaking does. The sector’s gross profit also shrank to $953,350 in Q2 2026, down from $2.18 million three quarters earlier, confirming that the yield premium has vanished.

Lido’s Institutional Moat

Lido remains the dominant force in Ethereum staking with a market share of 29.7%, despite recent outflows of over 284,800 ETH to competitors like ether.fi and Renzo Protocol. Its stETH token represents more than 9 million ETH staked, totaling over $18 billion in value locked and nearly one quarter of all staked ETH on the network. This scale provides the liquidity depth required for exchange-traded products, with approximately $100 million of liquidity within 2% depth and over $2 billion in weekly trading volume. WisdomTree launched a 100% stETH-backed European ETP in December 2025, and VanEck filed for a U.S. stETH ETF in October 2025, validating the infrastructure. Issuers prefer this model because native staking requires holding 30-40% of assets unstaked as a liquidity buffer, which reduces the portion of assets actually earning rewards. In early March 2026, Ethereum’s validator entry queue sat at roughly 57 days, making such buffers operationally necessary for daily pricing and redemption predictability.

The Restaking Reality Check

The shift away from restaking is not merely about lower yields; it is also about risk. Kelp’s April 2025 exploit resulted in $293 million in unbacked rsETH minted, prompting Aave to tighten collateral standards and exposing the additional software risk embedded in liquid restaking tokens. Ether.fi CEO Mike Silagadze argues that meaningful restaking yields have disappeared while stakers still perceive added risk, making an exit the more sensible option. The company’s diversification is already changing its revenue mix, with the card’s share of monthly revenue rising from 17% in January to 46% in July. However, ether.fi’s gross profit fell 47% from $18.71 million in Q3 2025 to $9.99 million in Q2 2026, indicating that the new business model has not yet fully replaced lost income. You might wonder if the remaining $8 billion locked in liquid restaking protocols will find a viable use case, but the current fee structure suggests the answer is no.