Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana ecosystem re-staking agreement financing is hot

In April, ChainCatcher sorted out the re-staking agreements and LRT agreements on Ethereum "Frequent capital support, project airdrops, re-staking LRT track becomes "a new holy land for gold digging"", which includes EigenLayer and LRT protocols based on it, such as Renzo, Ether.fi, Kelp DAO, EigenPie, YieldNest, Swell, Pendle Finance, etc.

Although Renzo's issuance of tokens and EigenLayer's airdrops have been expected, in the past 3 months, the market heat of the re-staking track has remained, and the "points war + one fish, two meals" is still enthusiastic 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-staking 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 on Eigenlayer, Karak_Network, etc.

Perhaps because of the wealth opportunities of re-staking, the narrative position of the re-staking track has recently overflowed 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 Solana re-staking projects.

Recently, the Bitcoin ecosystem has seen two financings of more than 10 million yuan. On May 30, Babylon completed a $70 million financing led by Paradigm; on July 2, the Bitcoin re-staking protocol Lombard completed a $16 million seed round of financing led by Polychain Capital.

Three major re-staking protocols on Ethereum: EigenLayer, Symbiotic, and Karak Network

EigenLayer's airdropped tokens are controversial

As the pioneer of the Restaking concept, EigenLayer has always been a leading project in the re-staking 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 most is that EigenLayer stated in the white paper that the EIGEN token has restricted the right to transfer in the initial stage and does 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 due to lack of liquidity, but in the eyes of users, this is undoubtedly the project party playing rogue. The stablecoin Ethena project, which has just completed the airdrop, posted on social media "The token is transferable, we love you" insinuatingly.

In addition to the non-transferability of tokens, EigenLayer also restricted the user's IP during the airdrop, which made users even more dissatisfied, because EigenLayer did not use IP restrictions on the early pledge deposit page, and did not announce the restriction of IP until the airdrop was released, which made participating users feel like they were being killed after their work was done.

However, judging from the data changes, the public opinion of the airdrop has not affected the TVL on EigenLayer. On the contrary, it has increased, from $14 billion on May 9 to $19 billion on June 16, and has now fallen back to $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 promoted in Q3." Community users speculate that it is very likely that EIGEN tokens will support trading.

As of July 12, EIGEN tokens still do not support transfer or trading, and the price on the over-the-counter secondary points trading market Whalesmarket is $5.39.

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, Lido co-founders and Paradigm were revealed to be secretly funding a new project, Symbiotic, to compete in the re-staking track. In the community's view, the timing of the emergence of re-staking Symbiotic is more like a counterattack against EigenLayer's dominance.

On June 11, Symbiotic announced its official launch and completed a $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-like ETH) derivatives, Symbiotic supports a wider variety of re-pledged assets, supporting the deposit of any ERC-20 token as re-pledge. For example, re-pledged assets not only support LSD pledge certificate assets such as Lido's stETH and cbETH, but also support stablecoin protocol Ethena's governance token ENA and stablecoin USDe, etc.

This means that crypto protocols can start native staking for their own native tokens through the Symbiotic platform to improve network security.

In terms of product form, Symbiotic supports customization according to business needs of developers, such as using Symbiotic's protocols or new networks to choose their pledge asset types, node operators, rewards and reduction mechanisms, etc. Eigenlayer adopts a centralized management method, with the official management of the delegation of pledged ETH, and node operators verifying various AVS, etc.

With the support of Lido and Paradigm, Symbiotic has deposited more than $1 billion worth of crypto assets in just one month.

As of July 12, the TVL of the Symbiotic platform was $1.09 billion, of which the value of Lido's wstETH deposited was $760 million, accounting for about 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, the 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 increase the availability of stETH and increase revenue for Lido DAO members.

On June 4, Mellow announced a partnership with Symbiotic to launch as a modular LRT liquidity re-staking project in its ecosystem.

Compared with the common LRT protocol, 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, pledge providers (such as Lido), etc., and supports pledge users to choose different risk configurations according to their needs to achieve flexible risk management and return optimization.

For users, ETH can be deposited directly into the Mellow platform, and the platform 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 the Symbiotic+Mellow platform at the same time.

On July 15, the TVL on the Mellow platform was US$488 million, and 37 million Symbiotic points were earned.

Karak Network, a re-pledge agreement that supports multi-type assets and multi-chain deployment

Karak Network works in a similar way to the Eigenlayer protocol, except that its AVS service is called the distributed security service DSS, and it has also launched its own Layer2 network K2.

Unlike Eigenlayer, Karak aims to support re-pledge of any asset. Currently, the re-pledged 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 multi-chain deployed, aiming to be able to be deposited on any chain. Currently, 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 1 billion US dollars, and new funds are not currently supported.

Bitcoin on-chain re-pledge protocols: Babylon, Lombard, BounceBit

Bitcoin re-pledge protocol Babylon

Babylon is a Bitcoin-based re-pledge protocol that introduces a staking function for Bitcoin, allowing BTC holders to trustlessly pledge their assets to other protocols or services that require security and trust, thereby obtaining PoS staking income and governance rights. At the same time, it also passes 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 income 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-pledge protocol EigenLayer, but because Bitcoin does not support smart contracts, Babylon needs to do one more step than EigenLayer to make non-pledgeable Bitcoins pledgeable before they can be re-pledged.

On May 30, Babylon once again announced the completion of a $70 million financing led by Paradigm. According to Rootdata data, as of July 12, Babylon has publicly raised a total of US$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 participating investors including BabylonChain, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Nomad Capital, etc.

The relationship between Lombard and Babylon is similar to that between Renzo and EigenLayer. The BTC pledged by users to Lombard will be automatically re-pledged on the Babylon platform to earn income.

The Lombard platform releases the liquidity of BTC pledged on Babylon through LBTC, that is, when users deposit BTC on the Lombard platform, they will receive an equal proportion of re-pledged certificate assets LBTC. The LBTC held can be used in DeFi protocols, such as lending, trading and staking, etc., to improve the efficiency of fund use.

Currently, users can use their email to apply for the waiting list for white test on the Lombard platform.

2. Lorenzo

Lorenzo is also a Bitcoin liquidity re-pledge protocol based on Babylon. Users can deposit BTC directly into Babylon through Lorenzo. The platform has been supported by Binance Labs.

On May 28, Lorenzo announced the launch of the pre-pledge Babylon event. Users can pledge BTC on the pre-pledge Babylon event page to obtain stBTC. All BTC received by Lorenzo will be pledged 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-staking chain designed specifically for Bitcoin. Its main products include BounceBit Portal, BounceBit Chain, and BounceClub. Among them, BounceBit Portal is the user interaction entrance, BounceClub aims to become a combined ecosystem of CeFi and DeFi, and BounceBit Chain is the main module of the re-staking 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 the validator and BounceBit's native token BB. Middleware such as cross-chain bridges and oracles can obtain 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, and the LST tokens generated can be used for further re-staking activities to amplify 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 Re-Pledge Protocol: Solayer, Cambrian, Picasso

Liquidity Re-Pledge Protocol Solayer

Solayer is the Solana ecosystem's re-pledge protocol, supporting SOL holders to pledge their assets to other Solana ecosystem protocols or DApp services that require security and trust, thereby obtaining more PoS staking income, and 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 include Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Solend founder Rooter, Tensor co-founder Richard Wu, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, etc. Earlier, it was revealed that three VCs familiar with the situation said that 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 $105 million, of which SOL accounted for about 60%.

Cambrian, a re-pledge agreement in financing negotiations

Cambrian is also a re-pledge agreement in the Solana ecosystem, supporting SOL and LST assets to be pledged to middleware or Dapp applications to earn more income.

It is reported that Cambrian founder Gennady Evstratov said that the team is finalizing $2.5 million in financing. Three investors said the valuation is about $25 million. Cambrian plans to launch a re-pledge 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 launched any staking products.

Re-staking Protocol 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 middleware, dApps, and L2 Rollups AVS (Active Verification Service).

Currently, the re-pledge products on Picasso support SOL and JitoSOL, mSOL, bSOL and other LST assets re-pledge. However, the current re-pledge assets participating in the lock-up on the platform are only 3.75 million US dollars.