Restaking
Restaking reuses already-staked assets to secure *additional* protocols — your staked ETH simultaneously backs Ethereum and extra services (oracles, bridge
Restaking reuses already-staked assets to secure *additional* protocols — your staked ETH simultaneously backs Ethereum and extra services (oracles, bridges, rollups), earning stacked rewards for stacked duties. EigenLayer pioneered the marketplace for it.
Why it matters
Restaking compounds both yield and systemic risk: more rewards, but slashing in any one service can cascade into the others, and a few giant restaking pools become single points of correlated failure. It’s leverage on trust itself — powerful in calm markets, precisely the wiring that transmits the next crisis everywhere at once.
Restaking risks, itemized
– Correlated slashing: one shared stake backs many services; a single software bug or malicious AVS can slash all of them simultaneously. – Operator concentration: delegation flows to the largest, most professional operators — recreating the pool-centralization problem one layer up (LRT issuers included). – Yield reflexivity: high AVS rewards attract stake, diluting returns while risk stays — late depositors buy the risk without the early yield. – Withdrawal gating: exits queue during stress; LRT prices gap below backing exactly when liquidity matters most. – Governance capture: whoever controls the biggest restaked pools steers both Ethereum-adjacent votes and AVS rulebooks.