Introduction: The 2025 Restaking Surge

The narrative dominating DeFi this summer is clear: restaking has gone from speculative fringe to headline. EigenLayer is the pioneer of restaking. It has firmly vaulted into the spotlight, reaching over $18 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) with peaks above $20 billion. This is not just growth; it's a financial tectonic shift, as EigenLayer becomes one of the largest DeFi protocols alongside giants like Lido.

What Is Restaking?

At its core, restaking transforms staked ETH from a single-use asset into a multi-utility tool. Originally staked to secure Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake system, these ETH holdings can now be reused to secure additional services, known in EigenLayer’s ecosystem as Actively Validated Services (AVSs). In effect, validators and token holders can earn extra returns without adding new capital, a powerful boost to capital efficiency.

Imagine staking your car to drive Uber, and then using the same car to deliver for DoorDash, all at once. That’s the essence of restaking.

Why the Restaking Boom?

Institutional Appetite for Layered Yield

Professional players are no longer chasing the volatile yields of meme coins, they’re chasing structured, risk-adjusted yield. Restaking delivers precisely that: programmable yield built atop Ethereum’s robust security, not hype-driven gambles.

Shared Security for Smaller Protocols

AVSs like oracles, DA layers, and sequencing systems typically couldn’t bootstrap robust validator sets. Restaking changes that. These services now tap into Ethereum’s validator base, lowering the barrier to secure DeFi innovation.

If 2025 is the year restaking went mainstream, EigenLayer is the engine powering that momentum. As the first mover and undisputed leader in this emerging category, it has transformed restaking from a niche experiment into a multi-billion-dollar market, rewriting the playbook for how staked ETH can work harder, smarter, and across more layers of the Ethereum economy.

What Is EigenLayer (and Why It Matters)

EigenLayer stands out as the infrastructure layer reimagining Ethereum’s staking dynamics. Rather than set up bespoke validator networks, EigenLayer enables both ETH and liquid-staked tokens (LSTs) to be restaked, securing broader services known as “Actively Validated Services” (AVS) and unlocking new avenues for yield and capital efficiency.

Double-Dip Utility, One Asset

Restakers gain layered benefits: not only do they continue to earn protocol-level staking returns, but they also reap additional rewards from AVSs. This double-layered yield mechanism dramatically enhances the earning potential of staked ETH, making the same capital work multiple angles at once.

Market Momentum: From Startup Idea to $18B+ TVL

The response has been emphatic. EigenLayer grew from $1.1 billion to over $18 billion in TVL throughout 2024-2025, a clear validation of restaking’s attractiveness? It now represents 85%+ of the overall restaking market, cementing its role as the dominant protocol in this emerging category.

EigenLayer isn't just an incremental improvement, it's a fundamental shift in how Ethereum vesting, yield, and security interplay. By enabling twice-fold returns on the same stake and reducing onboarding costs for new protocols, restaking introduces both greater capital efficiency and faster DeFi innovation.

If EigenLayer is the engine powering the restaking revolution, AVSs and liquid restaking tokens are the gears that make it move in new directions. Once ETH or LSTs are restaked, they’re not just passively securing Ethereum’s consensus—they become programmable capital, ready to be composed into multiple yield streams and DeFi strategies. This is where the real magic of restaking unfolds: layered incentives, deeper integrations, and a rapidly expanding design space for on-chain innovation.

How Restaking Unlocks Layered Yields and New DeFi Composability

The real power of restaking emerges in how it transforms Ethereum from a static income generator into a dynamic yield engine, layering additional opportunities on top of base staking rewards through Actively Validated Services (AVSs).

Expanding Ethereum’s Reach with AVSs

AVSs, or Actively Validated Services, extend Ethereum’s economic security to a variety of infrastructure components, everything from oracles and data-availability layers to shared sequencers and ZK coprocessors. These services plug into EigenLayer’s restaking framework, letting developers rent Ethereum-grade trust without building validator networks themselves.

This “security-as-a-service” model dramatically lowers the bootstrapping costs for new DeFi infrastructure, allowing small projects to tap into institutional-grade validator security from Day 1.

Maintaining Liquidity via Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs)

Restaking boosts yield, but it traditionally came at the cost of liquidity. That’s where liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) come into play. Issued by liquid restaking protocols, LRTs represent a claim on restaked ETH plus earned yield, while remaining tradable assets.

By combining staking income and AVS yield with continued liquidity, think of it as “staking without lock-up”, LRTs supercharge capital efficiency for yield-focused users.

Bringing Restaking to the Masses: Kraken’s Integration

Restaking has often been a playground for technically fluent users — until now. Kraken, through its subsidiary Staked, integrated EigenLayer restaking into its platform, enabling users to redeploy their already-staked ETH into restaking with just a few clicks. This unlocks extra rewards while preserving asset ownership on-platform.

This move significantly widens access to compound yield opportunities, making restaking more approachable for mainstream users who interface primarily through centralized exchanges.

Restaking isn’t just deeper yield, it’s a new composable layer of DeFi opportunity, accessible and efficient. AVSs add utility; LRTs offer flexibility; and integrations like Kraken’s bring it to a broader audience. The next era of Ethereum finance is not just about holding tokens, it’s about making them work infinitely harder and more intelligently.

But with every breakthrough in DeFi, the same mechanisms that amplify rewards can also magnify risks. Restaking is no exception, while layered yields and composability open powerful new opportunities, they also introduce new vectors for slashing, systemic shocks, and market volatility that stakers must navigate carefully.

Risks to Manage in the Restaking Economy

Restaking opens up new avenues of yield, but it doesn’t come without its share of risk. Here’s what every builder and staker needs to consider:

Slashing and Compounding Risk

EigenLayer implements a powerful, cryptoeconomic discipline, slashing your stake for misbehavior or failure to uphold AVS obligations. This isn’t abstract: even operational mistakes, like outdated keys or client bugs, can result in penalties, which may even wipe out your Ethereum staking income.

It gets riskier with scale. Each additional AVS increases complexity and, by extension, slashing vulnerability. A mistake in one AVS environment could ripple across others, exponentially increasing risk exposure.

Systemic Risk from Rehypothecation

Restaking multiplies yield, but it also ties various services together into a potentially fragile stack. Critics warn that if restaked assets flow repeatedly through lending loops or derivative stacks, any breach can cascade across protocols, causing rapid, collaborative losses.

This concentration of risk becomes especially concerning if AVS and restaking utilities start overlapping, magnifying slashing or exploiting fallout.

TVL Volatility: Navigating Market Cycles and Protocol Maturation

TVL Volatility: Navigating Hype Cycles and Fundamentals

Restaking has experienced significant growth spurts followed by natural corrections as the market matures. EigenLayer's TVL reached peaks above $20 billion before stabilizing around $18-19 billion, reflecting the typical pattern of early DeFi adoption cycles where initial enthusiasm gives way to more measured participation.

Individual liquid restaking providers have shown varying resilience during market corrections. Some protocols that relied heavily on token incentives and airdrops have seen notable TVL declines as these programs concluded and users migrated to higher-yielding opportunities. This pattern highlights a fundamental challenge: distinguishing between sustainable yield generation and incentive-driven capital attraction.

The volatility underscores that restaking models need robust fundamentals beyond speculative capital. While short-term TVL fluctuations are normal, long-term success depends on genuine utility, competitive yields, and risk management rather than temporary incentive programs.

While the promise of restaking is clear, navigating its risks requires robust infrastructure and trusted intermediaries. This is where liquid staking protocols and institutional players step in, bridging the gap between innovative yield strategies and the security, liquidity, and compliance frameworks that can sustain them at scale.

Role of Liquid Staking Protocols

The restaking ecosystem doesn’t stand alone, it flourishes atop a vibrant landscape of liquid staking protocols that extend the utility of staked ETH. EigenLayer’s rise has been powered, in part, by its integration with and differentiation from these layers.

Liquid Staking as a Gateway to Restaking Innovation

Protocols like Lido and Ether.fi formed the foundation by making ETH staking more accessible, turning locked ETH into transferrable tokens like stETH and eETH that maintain ownership flexibility. These Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) can now be restaked via EigenLayer to secure additional services, enhancing capital efficiency without requiring new ETH deposits. In fact, Ether.fi and similar platforms together command a dominant share of the LRT (Liquid Restaking Token) market share on EigenLayer, unlocking seamless yield stacking through automated restaking flows.

These platforms bridge fixed staking returns and dynamic DeFi composability, effectively turning a single asset into both liquidity and layered yield engines. It’s precisely this synergy between foundational liquid staking protocols and EigenLayer that has accelerated adoption across retail and institutional segments.

Institutional-Grade Integration: Anchorage Digital Leading the Way

Beyond retail use cases, restaking is gaining foothold in institutions through Anchorage Digital’s EigenLayer integration. Anchored by federal banking licenses and regulated custody infrastructure, Anchorage now enables institutional participants to restake ETH securely, leveraging both EigenLayer and liquid staking tokens like LsETH, all within a compliant framework.

This convergence of liquid staking, restaking, and regulated custody drives home how mainstream players can adopt advanced DeFi strategies without compromising on security or regulation.

By anchoring restaking in both liquid staking ecosystems and institution-ready custody models, the DeFi landscape now supports deeper yield strategies with integrity, trust, and seamless accessibility.

As liquid staking protocols and institutional integrations cement restaking’s role in Ethereum’s evolving infrastructure, the next frontier is clear: building applications that harness this new layer of security and capital efficiency. But realizing that potential requires more than just innovative ideas, it demands robust infrastructure capable of handling real-time data, cross-chain complexity, and risk-aware execution. This is where developers, and the tools they choose, will define the pace and direction of restaking’s adoption.

Quicknode: Powering the Next Wave of Restaking Applications

Restaking is creating entirely new categories of Ethereum-native and cross-chain applications, but the builders behind them face a significant technical challenge. Real-time validator monitoring, slashing logic execution, liquid restaking token (LRT) tracking, and cross-chain messaging all require infrastructure that is both high-performance and fault-tolerant. Any latency, downtime, or data inaccuracy directly impacts user trust and capital safety.

This is where Quicknode becomes a foundational partner for restaking developers. With ultra-fast, high-throughput RPC endpoints across Ethereum, Solana, and other major chains, Quicknode delivers the low-latency, high-availability access that restaking dApps need to operate at scale. Developers can pair Quicknode’s real-time onchain data indexing with LRT monitoring logic to track validator performance, detect slashing events instantly, and trigger automated safety protocols.

Beyond raw speed and reliability, Quicknode’s cross-chain capabilities unlock a broader design space for restaking-enabled products. For example:

• Restaking Dashboards – Provide users with granular, real-time insights into validator performance, yield rates, and security metrics.

• Yield Aggregators – Automatically route staked assets into the highest-performing restaking strategies across chains.

• Risk-Aware Lending Platforms – Offer loans against LRTs with risk models informed by live validator and slashing data.

By combining Ethereum’s restaking primitives with Quicknode’s infrastructure, developers can move from concept to production without bottlenecks in data access or scalability. In short, Quicknode isn’t just a service provider here, it’s the backbone enabling restaking’s next generation of high-performance, trust-critical applications.

As developers begin experimenting with restaking-powered applications, the winners won’t just be those with the best ideas, it will be those with the most reliable infrastructure behind them. Quicknode’s speed, data accuracy, and cross-chain capabilities position it as more than just a service provider; it’s the foundation layer enabling this next chapter of DeFi’s evolution. And if the current wave of innovation is any indication, we’re only scratching the surface of what restaking can unlock.

Looking Ahead: Building with Restaking in 2025

Restaking is evolving from a niche Ethereum staking extension into a core DeFi primitive, one that doubles as both a shared security layer and a yield-generating engine. By allowing staked ETH (and its derivatives) to secure multiple networks simultaneously, restaking transforms Ethereum’s economic weight into a reusable trust foundation for a new wave of applications.

In 2025, we can expect this design space to accelerate as modular blockchain architectures, Layer 2s, app-specific rollups, and Actively Validated Services (AVSs), increasingly tap into Ethereum’s restaking layer. This shared economic base will allow emerging chains and services to bootstrap security without the slow, capital-intensive process of building their own validator sets. The result: faster iteration cycles, lower launch costs, and a denser network of interoperable services.

But with scale comes complexity. As more assets, chains, and services participate in the restaking ecosystem, the technical requirements rise sharply:

• Performance – Millisecond-level RPC response times to support validator monitoring, transaction routing, and real-time slashing detection.

• Observability – Comprehensive, indexed onchain data to power analytics, dashboards, and automated decision-making.

• Security – Highly available infrastructure that can withstand traffic surges, network partitions, or malicious attempts to disrupt service.

This is where infrastructure providers like Quicknode will become not just helpful, but mission-critical. High-throughput RPC endpoints, precise data indexing, and cross-chain capabilities aren’t luxuries in the restaking era, they’re the difference between a platform that scales seamlessly and one that fails under load.

In short, 2025 will be the year where the restaking ecosystem transitions from proof-of-concept experimentation to production-grade, high-value applications and the builders who succeed will be those who invest in robust, developer-first infrastructure from day one.

Restaking: Where Security, Yield & Speed Converge

Restaking is transforming ETH from a passive yield asset into a multi-purpose DeFi primitive — productive, composable, and embedded in Ethereum’s security layer.

For developers, the core building blocks already exist: high-throughput RPCs, real-time onchain indexing, LRT tracking, and robust risk models. The challenge now is turning these into applications that make restaking essential, not experimental.

This is where infrastructure matters. With slashing events measured in seconds and cross-chain bridging demanding real-time sync, Quicknode delivers the speed, reliability, and observability needed to build and scale restaking-powered apps with confidence.

Restaking is where security, yield, and speed converge and Quicknode is the foundation helping developers turn that convergence into the next wave of DeFi.