Since the staking cap was temporarily removed, the TVL of the restaking protocol has increased by 307% during the last month. EigenLayer, the Ethereum restaking protocol, has surpassed JustLend, the cryptocurrency lending protocol, to become the fourth-largest protocol by total value locked (TVL).
On February 15, EigenLayer’s TVL increased 5.73% to $6.99 billion. DefiLlama data shows that the TVL of the restaking protocol has increased by 307% over the last month and by 47.95% over the last seven days.
According to an official announcement, EigenLayer’s TVL began increasing on February 5 after the protocol momentarily lifted its staking cap in an effort to encourage organic development. EigenLayer’s TVL increased by more than 181% during this restaking time, from just $2.15 billion on February 5 to $6.05 billion on February 10. Although a new staking cap was implemented, the project intends to eventually eliminate this cap permanently.
In order to protect and validate other networks, validators and stakers can restake liquid staking derivative tokens like Lido Staked ETH and RocketPool’s rETH thanks to restaking protocols like EigenLayer. To increase yield, these assets can also be used in other decentralized finance (DeFI) protocols.
Restaking protocols rank sixth with $6.99 billion in total TVL, whereas liquid staking is now the top protocol category with $42.69 billion in TVL, according to DefiLlama.
In the thirty days preceding February 9, one in four Ethereum validators has assigned their withdrawal credentials to EigenPod, according to an X post by EigenLayer’s strategy lead, Brianna Montgomery.
January saw a sharp increase in interest in staking protocols, just after EigenLayer’s TVL crossed $1 billion on December 28, 2023. As of Feb. 15, Dune data shows that there are 108,574 depositors on the protocol in total. At the moment, EigenLayer has more than 1.52 million Ether tokens in total.
EigenLayer intends to soon enable investors to run a staking node by opening up its mainnet to operators. According to a Feb. 9 release on X, the protocol is also getting ready to introduce EigenDA, a decentralized data availability service based on Ethereum.