Ether.fi Restructures Staking Approach, Moves Away from EigenLayer and Restaking on Symbiotic and weETH

Handover of Ether.fi’s Restaking Exposure

Ether.fi, a leading protocol in the cryptocurrency sector, recently announced a strategic adjustment to its operations. Specifically, the platform has excluded all restaking exposure from weETH, its primary asset. This pivotal decision positions weETH as a standard liquid staking token, thereby limiting restaking to a new token dubbed weETHs. This auxiliary asset bears its foundations on Symbiotic’s technology, one of the prominent economic models in the cryptocurrency landscape. Ether.fi broke the news of the corporate realignment on the well-known X platform last Thursday.

Phasing out the Ether.fi – EigenLayer Model

Until recently, ether.fi was boasting as the largest enterprise operating on the restaking model of EigenLayers. This successful venture, which combined Ethereum Staking yield with EigenLayer’s restaking exposure in one token, fuelled ether.fi’s rapid expansion from 2024 onwards. However, this model is now separated. Consequently, stakeholders interested in partaking in restaking will now have to opt for a separate token. Ether.fi’s staking branch holds an impressive $3.3 billion, as reported by DefiLlama. The sheer size of this investment makes ether.fi the grandest liquid restaking protocol and the third-largest across liquid staking and restaking. Only Lido and Binance staked ETH outshine ether.fi. The company’s peak investment value was recorded in August 2025 at an impressive total of $12.43 billion.

Circulation of the weETH and weETHs tokens

Currently, a total of 1.72 million weETH are in circulation. The token holding the restaking mantle, weETHs, has a supply of 9,136 tokens approximated to be worth a significant $18 million. Surprisingly, this supply represents a mere half percent of the protocol’s original staking base. Mike Silagadze, the CEO of ether.fi reacted to the announcement via his Twitter handle. In his words, Mike labelled the development as the ‘End of an era.’ However, despite his acknowledgment of the premature nature of restaking, the CEO remains hopeful of its future revival.

Stakeholder volatility and corporate clarity

The announcement resulted in mixed reactions from ether.fi’s stakeholders. Those already holding stakes now face a crucial decision of choosing between basic staking exposure and additional restaking exposure that aligns with their financial goals. Conversely, new users heralded the move, viewing the split as a simplification of the EtherFi stack, making its functioning easy to comprehend. Eigen Labs, the company behind EigenLayers, and symbiotic had not issued a public response at the time of this article. However, the shift from EigenLayer was in action before the formal announcement. As outlined by ether.fi’s own statement regarding slashing risk, by August 2026, less than 1% of ether.fi’s assets continue to be restaked with EigenLayers. This value is down from about a half at the beginning of the same year.

Future plans and current criticism

Notably, ether.fi’s plan is to completely sever ties with EigenLayers by Q4 2026. Its intention is to eliminate EigenPod withdrawal credentials from its validators, thus breaking the protocol’s last structural link to EigenLayer. However, ether.fi has failed to publish a blog post elaborating on the reasons for the decision. The platform’s recent posts majorly tackled unrelated weETH security reviews, which led to criticism regarding the decision’s lack of accompanying justifications. Interestingly, ether.fi’s public statement pointed out that the new arrangement guarantees no bundled risk. A part of the documentation surrounding weETHs indicates that a fraction of weETHs collateral is allocated to the Cap Protocol. This protocol enables M11 Credit to borrow against it and deposit the proceeds into a Pareto vault, which supplies capital to FalconX’s prime brokerage.

Fluctuation of trades and future predictions

Liquid restaking has been contracting since December 2024. During this time, deposits in the sector reached a high of $18.3 billion but lost momentum. However, experts predict that it will regain its standing once the industry incentives increase. The ETHFI trades at $0.36, a decrease of 3.2% over 24 hours, and a weak performance of 11.4% over the past week. The result is its modest market valuation of $346 million. The value of EIGEN is $0.18, dropping by 3.2% in a day and a significant 20.8% over 30 days. The current performance resulted in its market capitalization plummeting to $133 million. Despite these shortcomings, experts maintain a positive outlook. The newfound autonomy of ether.fi is expected to greatly streamline its operations, promising a brighter, more profitable future for this titan of the cryptocurrency sector.