Restaking Era Ends as ether.fi Cuts Ties with EigenLayer

ether.fi is severing its final ties to EigenLayer this quarter, marking the end of an era for restaking. The company's CEO, Mike Silagadze, said there are no meaningful yield opportunities in the sector. In August, the project decoupled restaking functionality from weETH, which now functions as a standard liquid staking token.

According to DefiLlama data, the restaking sector held $10.02 billion in TVL in September, but generated only $99,977 in fees over the previous week. In contrast, the liquid staking sector had $51.87 billion in TVL and generated $27.35 million in weekly fees.

Standard staking generates 53 times more yield than restaking for assets of equal size. The top five liquid restaking protocols, Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer Finance, and Bedrock, saw their combined gross profit drop to $953,300 in Q2 2026 from $2.18 million three quarters prior.

The EigenLayer technology is not the problem; it's a failure of the bridge that allowed attackers to mint counterfeit tokens worth approximately $293 million without any underlying ETH backing in April 2026.