Source: ARK Invest
In 1997, Robert Greer proposed three asset categories in The Journal of Portfolio Management:
1. Capital assets: assets that can generate value/cash flow, such as stocks, bonds, etc.;
2. Consumable or convertible assets: assets that can be consumed, burned or converted once, such as oil and coffee;
3. Store-of-value assets: Value persists in time/space and is scarce, such as gold and Bitcoin.
In 2019, David Hoffman pointed out here that Ethereum can be used as all three assets at the same time: pledged ETH as a capital asset, Gas as a consumable asset, and ETH locked in DeFi as a store-of-value asset.
In the past five years, with the vigorous development of the Ethereum ecosystem, the utility of ETH has been continuously extended - intuitively reflected in ETH as a unit of account for NFTs, as a Gas Token for Ethereum Layer2, a unit of account for MEV activities, and LST and DeFi derivatives built on LST, etc.
Recently, EigenLayer has extended ETH's economic security to middleware and even other ecosystems such as Cosmos through re-staking, further strengthening ETH's network effect.
We briefly summarize it:
1. Pledged or re-pledged ETH, including liquid pledge and re-pledge tokens such as stETH and eETH, represents assets that can generate value/cash flow and is used as a capital asset;
2. ETH is the Gas spent on Layer1 and Layer2, including the data availability overhead of Rollup in Layer1, the overhead of verifying zero-knowledge proofs, etc., which can be consumed and burned once, so it is regarded as a consumable asset;
3. ETH is the reserve asset of the DAO treasury of each protocol, the collateral of CeFi and DeFi, as well as NFT transactions and MEV. Supply chain pricing, token trading pairs, etc. are used as accounting units and exchange media respectively, and the value persists in time/space, which is a value storage asset.
Among them, staking is the core pillar of the Ethereum network. By allowing participants to lock ETH and participate in the verification process, staking provides a strong economic incentive for the network, transforming Ethereum into a safer, more efficient and more sustainable blockchain platform, laying a solid foundation for its long-term development.
This article will provide a systematic report on the staking and re-staking field and its ecology, as well as the investment logic and views accumulated from our investment layout in this track.
1. Staking
1.1 Overview
The concept of "staking" was born before Ethereum. In 2012, in order to solve the problem of high energy consumption in Bitcoin mining, Peercoin first proposed Proof-of-Stake (PoS), and staking is one of its key attributes.
In the context of Ethereum, generally speaking, staking refers to the process of locking 32 ETH on the Ethereum blockchain to run the validator software, thereby helping the Ethereum network verify transactions and maintain security, and obtaining a certain amount of ETH rewards.
Currently, the annualized return of Ethereum staking is about 3.24%, provided by the issuance of ETH, and other income may come from Tips and MEV income of the Ethereum network.
1.2 Four forms of staking
1.2.1 Solo Staking
Source: ConsenSys
Solo staking is the basic form of all staking methods. Stakers need to deposit 32 ETH and run and maintain a complete Ethereum client to ensure the normal operation of the validator. Solo staking is beneficial to the decentralization of the network.
Ideally, since solo staking is self-managed and does not require paying service fees to any third party, it also obtains the highest returns. However, compared with professional staking services, solo staking may also result in missed rewards or fines due to disconnection or malicious behavior, and the operating and maintenance costs may fluctuate.
The proportion of solo staking is an important indicator of the degree of decentralization of Ethereum. According to a study conducted by rated, as of the end of 2022, solo stakers accounted for approximately 6.5% of all Ethereum validators.
Although solo staking is a key pillar of Ethereum's decentralization, it is difficult for solo staking to become mainstream due to the funding requirements of 32 ETH and the operational threshold. As Ethereum staking develops, the following staking methods have emerged in the market.
1.2.2 Staking Service Provider (Pledge Service Provider)
In order to meet the scale development of the pledge track, pledge service providers usually provide large-scale and professional pledge services for institutional clients or high-net-worth individuals, and charge a certain percentage of fees based on pledge income (ranging from 5%-10% depending on the scale of funds involved in pledge). Companies such as Kiln and Figment are representatives of pledge service providers, and the pledged assets supported by Kiln's technology exceed 8.6 billion US dollars.
In addition to providing pledge services for Ethereum, pledge service providers also basically cover the pledge business of other PoS chains, and are also involved in the re-staking business.
In addition to the B2B business model, the B2B2C business model is also an important part of the revenue of these companies. For example, Kiln cooperates with mainstream wallets such as Ledger, Coinbase Wallet and Metamask to provide one-stop staking solutions for users of these wallets. Wallets provide distribution channels for staking service providers, while the latter provide infrastructure and services for the former, and the two share the revenue.
1.2.3 Centralized Exchange Staking
Centralized exchange staking is a staking service provided by various centralized exchanges to their users. This type of staking is custodial and requires almost no capital threshold, but the disadvantage is that the fees are usually high and opaque, and there are risks such as misappropriation of funds. Companies such as Coinbase and Binance are representatives of centralized exchange staking.
The proportion of staking on centralized exchanges has dropped from about 40% in 2021-2022 to 24.4% now. The reasons may be: first, after the collapse of FTX, users' trust in centralized, custodial solutions has declined; second, in February 2023, under regulatory pressure from the US SEC, Kraken announced the termination of staking services to US customers, causing users to worry about staking service providers in specific jurisdictions. Despite this, staking on centralized exchanges is still the second largest staking option after liquidity staking.
1.2.4 Liquid Staking (Liquidity Staking/LST)
LST is the application of staking at the protocol and smart contract level. Protocols such as Lido collect ETH from users and outsource the business of running validators to third-party staking service providers, while charging fees.
The main feature of LST is that these protocols usually return 1 equivalent tokenized claim to users as a voucher (such as Lido's stETH), thereby liberating the liquidity of funds. These vouchers can be roughly considered as ETH equivalent and can be used in multiple DeFi protocols to obtain additional returns. There is a risk of decoupling of LST's tokenized claims, but this risk has been reduced after the "Shanghai Upgrade" Ethereum activation withdrawal.
Lido currently has the highest market share in LST, with a TVL that is 12.9 times that of the second-place Rocket Pool. In addition to Lido, some differentiated products have also been derived.
1. For example, compared with Lido's professional staking service provider, Rocket Pool allows anyone to run a validator for Rocket Pool's stakers, with a total of 3,716 node operators, which has better decentralization and capital efficiency.
2. Institutions mainly consider three points when participating in staking: security, liquidity and compliance. Traditional institutions need to conduct due diligence on counterparty risks and complete a series of compliance processes such as KYC/AML. At this stage, unlicensed LSTs such as Lido cannot meet such needs. Alluvial, in collaboration with Coinbase and other leading staking service providers, has launched the industry standard for LST: Liquid Collective, in response to the compliance needs of institutions. It mainly provides a "dedicated pool" that is fully compliant and meets KYC/AML requirements, which can better help traditional funds enter the Ethereum staking market.
Source: GSR, IOSG
The above table summarizes the above content.
1.3 Summary
a. Looking back at the development of the staking track, the emergence of LST has further released liquidity while solving the above two major pain points of funds and operations. These three points are the primary reasons for Lido's success. The quality of liquidity is directly related to the user's psychological expectations and the degree of trust in the protocol. Lido had the best exit liquidity in the market before the "Shanghai Upgrade" activated withdrawals, which is also the main reason why Lido can attract new funds to participate in staking. When the competitive landscape of LST has been determined and fierce competition has begun between LRTs, Ether.fi has established a leading position in the market with a good liquidity pool, which also verifies this point.
b. Looking at the staking market, Lido has long occupied a leading position with a market share of about 30%, and the head effect is quite obvious. Despite this, there are still some performance opportunities for differentiated products in the market. For example, Liquid Collective's compliant staking solutions for more traditional institutional users; and the market opened up by the new narrative of re-staking - in fact, Ether.fi has taken advantage of the re-staking trend and quickly attracted funds in the short term, attracting 1.21 million ETH deposits in the past 6 months, with a growth rate of 288.1%, becoming the third largest staker of Ethereum, second only to Lido and Coinbase.
c. In addition to LST, we believe that staking service providers are also good investment categories. LSTs like Lido are essentially middlemen connecting node operators to end users, playing a distribution role, and relying on node operators for actual operation and operation. Compared with running nodes by themselves, these node operators have the cost advantage of scale and a high level of service guarantee. Whether it is running nodes in cooperation with LST, re-staking protocols, etc., or helping wallet users participate in staking, node operators have a good ecological niche and a solid business model. In addition, as validators, these node operators are key checkpoints in the life cycle of on-chain transactions and have an important position. Pre-confirmation, which has recently appeared in the market, is one of the services that validators can provide.
2. Restaking
2.1 Overview
Source: ETH Restaking Dashboard by @blocklytics
Based on Ethereum staking, EigenLayer The project represented by EigenLayer proposed re-staking, that is, the pledger makes a second pledge based on the original Ethereum pledge exposure, in order to promise to honestly provide economic security for the middleware and obtain corresponding benefits; at the same time, the re-staker needs to bear the risk of slashing the pledge exposure due to improper operation and other factors.
In terms of market size, EigenLayer surpassed Uniswap and AAVE in succession shortly after the mainnet was launched, and quickly became the second largest DeFi protocol after Lido. As of now, EigenLayer's TVL has reached 15.5 billion US dollars, three times that of Uniswap, with 19 AVS and 339 node operators running on the mainnet.
In addition to EigenLayer, Symbiotic, a re-staking protocol supported by Lido and Paradigm, has also been launched on the market. Symbiotic is a re-pledge solution supported by Lido and Paradigm. On the asset side, Symbiotic accepts any ERC-20 token or LP position as a re-pledge asset. As of now, Symbiotic's TVL has reached 1.2 billion US dollars, mainly composed of ETH-based LST and stablecoins.
This chapter will mainly discuss EigenLayer.
2.2 EigenLayer
Before EigenLayer, there were obvious pain points in the middleware in the Ethereum ecosystem:
To become a validator (node operator) of the middleware, you first need to invest money. For the sake of token value capture, validators are often required to stake the native tokens of the middleware, which requires a certain marginal cost, and due to the volatility of token prices, there is uncertainty in their risk exposure, and even the loss caused by the decline of tokens may be far greater than the gains obtained.
And the project party needs to maintain a certain token value, otherwise rational funds will move to other platforms or protocols with higher returns. Secondly, the security of the middleware depends on the overall value of the staked tokens; if the token plummets, the cost of attacking the network will also decrease. This problem is particularly prominent in the early stages of the project and when the token value is low.
For some dApps that rely on middleware (such as derivatives that require oracle price feeds), their security actually depends on the trust assumptions of both Ethereum and the middleware. This creates a barrel effect-the security of the system depends on the shortcomings of it.
These are the basic problems that EigenLayer wants to solve.
Source: EigenLayer, IOSG
EigenLayer solves the above problems by introducing re-staking: re-staking by existing Ethereum stakers means that no additional funds are required, but the existing ETH staked shares are extended to the new protocol (of course, this introduces new risk exposure and assumptions), and the price of ETH is relatively stable, making the economic security based on ETH more reliable.
Project parties can adopt a dual staking model, that is, validators stake both native tokens and ETH at the same time, while ensuring that the utility of the token is not sacrificed, and avoiding the death spiral caused by the price drop of a single token. At the same time, Ethereum's validators are more decentralized.
Source: IOSG
Structurally, EigenLayer is a three-party market:
AVS (Actively Validated Service). That is, infrastructure such as cross-chain bridges and oracles. AVS, as a consumer of economic security, is protected by economic security and pays re-stakeholders.
Re-stakeholders. Re-stakeholders with ETH exposure can participate by transferring their pledge withdrawal vouchers to the EigenLayer smart contract, or simply depositing LST (such as stETH). If the re-stakeholder is unable to run an AVS node, they can delegate this task to an operator.
Operator. AVS nodes are run by operators delegated by the re-stakeholder or provide verification services. Operators can choose which AVS to provide services for. Once they provide services for AVS, they must comply with the slashing rules set by AVS.
The following figure summarizes the way and workflow to participate in re-staking on EigenLayer.
Source: IOSG
EigenLayer provides the following three types of programmable trust:
Source: EigenLayer
Economic Trust: Economic trust relies on people's confidence in the pledged assets. If the profit from corruption is lower than the cost of corruption, economically rational actors will not launch an attack. For example, if the cost of launching an attack on a cross-chain bridge is $1 billion, but the profit is only $500 million, it is obviously irrational from an economic point of view to conduct the attack. As a widely adopted cryptoeconomic primitive, slashing can greatly increase the cost of corruption, thereby strengthening economic security.
Decentralized trust: The essence of decentralized trust is to have a large and widely distributed set of validators, both virtually and geographically. In order to prevent collusion and liveness attacks between nodes in AVS, it is best not to have a single service provider run all nodes. On EigenLayer, different AVS can customize their degree of decentralization. For example, they can set geographic location requirements for node operators, or only allow individual operators to provide node services, and provide more incentives to attract such operators accordingly.
Ethereum "Inclusion" Trust: In addition to making a commitment to Ethereum through staking, Ethereum validators can also make a credible commitment to AVS if they further stake on EigenLayer. This allows proposers to provide some services on Ethereum (for example, partial block auctions through MEV-Boost++) without making changes to the Ethereum protocol. For example, forward block space auctions allow buyers to ensure that they get future block space in advance. Validators who participate in re-staking can make a credible commitment to block space, and if they do not include the buyer's transaction afterwards, they will be fined.
2.3 Babylon
(Conceptually, Babylon does not belong to "re-staking", but to Bitcoin "staking", but because its use case is similar to EigenLayer, providing economic security for blockchain, middleware, etc., it is discussed in this section)
Babylon was launched based on the following background: Due to the limitations of the programmability of the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin cannot generate "native" income. Generally speaking, there are two main ways for Bitcoin to generate income:
Wrapped Bitcoin. Solutions similar to WBTC issue WBTC on Ethereum through a 1:1 acceptance method, allowing Bitcoin to participate in various DeFi activities on Ethereum in a mapping manner. The current volume of WBTC is around 10 billion US dollars. However, such solutions are usually based on multi-signature and custodian mechanisms, and are highly centralized.
Deposit in a centralized exchange. The financial products of centralized exchanges provide Bitcoin returns. However, the returns are often opaque and there are large financial risks.
Babylon uses Bitcoin time lock opcodes and signature algorithm Extratable One-time Signature (EOTS) to introduce native Bitcoin staking on the Bitcoin blockchain without relying on any third-party custody, packaging, and cross-chain bridges. This technical mechanism is Babylon's technological innovation, which releases the utilization value of idle Bitcoin and provides extremely important infrastructure for the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The following figure summarizes the methods and workflows for participating in Bitcoin staking on Babylon.
Source: IOSG
3. Restaking and its ecology
3.1 Liquid Restaking (Liquidity Restaking/LRT)
LRT is a new asset class derived from the tripartite market around EigenLayer. Currently, the total TVL of the LRT protocol is about 6.4 billion US dollars, accounting for about 41.29% of the EigenLayer TVL. The starting point of LRT is similar to that of LST, which is mainly to liberate the liquidity (locked in the re-staking ETH). Due to the different composition of LRT's underlying assets, LRT is more complex than LST and has a dynamic nature.
Source: IOSG
The following is a comparison between the two:
1. Investment portfolio
LST's investment portfolio only has Ethereum staking, but LRT's investment portfolio is diverse, and funds can be invested in different AVS to provide them with economic security, and naturally have different risk levels. The fund management methods and risk preferences of different LRT protocols are also different. At the fund management level, LST is passively managed, and LRT is actively managed. LRT may provide different management strategies corresponding to different levels of AVS (such as mature AVS vs. newly launched AVS) to adapt to users' income/risk preferences.
2. Yield, source and composition of yield
The yield of LST is currently around 2.6%~3%, which comes from the joint income of the Ethereum consensus layer and the execution layer, and is composed of ETH.
The yield of LRT is not yet determined, but it basically comes from the fees paid by each AVS, and may be composed of AVS tokens, ETH, USDC or a mixture of the three. According to the information we have obtained from exchanges with some AVS, most AVS will reserve several percentage points of the total token supply as incentives and security budgets. If AVS is online before the token is issued, it may also pay ETH or USDC, depending on the specific situation.
Since it is based on AVS tokens, the risk of its token fluctuations will be greater than ETH, and APR will fluctuate accordingly. AVS may also have rotations of entry and exit. Such things will bring uncertainty to the yield of LRT.
3. Punishment risk
There are two types of penalties for Ethereum staking: Inactivity Leaking and Slashing, such as missing block proposals and double voting, and the rules are highly certain. If operated by a professional node service provider, the correctness can reach about 98.5%.
The LRT protocol needs to believe that the AVS software coding is correct and there is no objection to the penalty rules to avoid triggering unexpected penalties. Due to the variety of AVS and most of them are early projects, there is uncertainty in itself. In addition, AVS may have changes in rules as the business develops, such as iterating more functions, etc. In addition, at the risk management level, it is also necessary to consider the upgradeability of the AVS Slasher contract, whether the penalty conditions are objective and verifiable, etc. Since LRT acts as an agent to manage user assets, LRT needs to take all these aspects into consideration and carefully select partners.
Of course, EigenLayer encourages AVS to conduct a full audit, including AVS's code, confiscation conditions, and logic of interaction with EigenLayer. EigenLayer also has a multi-signature-based veto committee to conduct a final review and control of confiscation events.
In general, LRT is an asset management protocol. Based on this market positioning, LRT can further explore related businesses, such as expanding to protocols such as Symbiotic and Babylon, or DeFi strategy vaults similar to Yearn, to meet the needs of different ecosystem scenarios and users with different risk preferences.
3.2 AVS (Actively Validated Service)
AVS is the object of economic security provided by EigenLayer. According to the official documentation of EigenLayer, AVS covers the following infrastructure: side chain, data availability layer, new virtual machine, guardian network, oracle network, cross-chain bridge, threshold encryption scheme, trusted execution environment, etc. The following table lists more types that may be built on AVS.
Source: EigenLayer, IOSG
Around the core primitives of re-staking, EigenLayer has built a good AVS pipeline. Currently, 19 AVS are online on the mainnet.
For example, EigenDA is a data availability solution developed by EigenLabs and is also marketed as a flagship AVS. EigenDA's solution is derived from Danksharding, the Ethereum scaling solution. The concept of Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is also widely used in DA projects such as Celestia and Avail.
For AVS, EigenLayer provides the following benefits:
Economic security and node operation services during the project startup phase. During the maturity of the project, if there is a sharp increase in economic security needs in the short term, EigenLayer can also provide rentable elastic security;
AVS's node verification service is run by Ethereum validators, which can achieve better decentralization compared to independent operation by the project party or centralized node service providers;
It is possible to reduce verification and operation costs (depending on the specific situation) and reduce marginal costs;
EigenLayer's proposed Dual Staking model can provide AVS with certain token utility;
Build certain services and products based on the trusted commitment of Ethereum validators, such as pre-confirmation;
As an EigenLayer ecological project, it has received certain endorsements, marketing support, market exposure, etc.
As a technical solution, AVS is often more natural and concise than L1 and middleware starting their own node network. In addition, it should be recognized that AVS is essentially a middleware and infrastructure project. The logic of investing in AVS should be based on the logic of evaluating such projects (products, technology, competitive landscape, etc.). AVS itself does not provide special differentiation.
As mentioned above, AVS is the consumer and renter of re-staking, and the core of the three-party market. The market relies on AVS for payment, which is generally paid in AVS's native token (if the token is not online, it may be in the form of points), usually 3%-5% of the total supply of AVS tokens. In the near future, EigenDA will begin to pay re-stakers and node operators at a price of 10 ETH per month. EigenLayer itself will also take out 4% of its total token supply to support all early-stage AVS to help them through the cold start period.
In the medium and long term, the driving force for the sustainable development of the EigenLayer ecosystem lies in the demand side. There needs to be enough AVS to pay for economic security, and it must be sustainable. This is related to the business situation and operational capabilities of AVS itself, and will eventually be reflected in the token price.
The income from Ethereum staking will exist for a long time and remain in a stable range, but the income of AVS may not be. The income, persistence, and volatility provided by each AVS token are different, and the risk preference and pursuit of income of each re-stakeholder are also different. In this process, there will be spontaneous dynamic regulation by the market (more ETH staking to a certain AVS will reduce the yield, prompting pledgers to turn to other AVS or other protocols).
3.3 Summary
After the airdrop craze faded and the market cooled down, EigenLayer's TVL fell by about 20%, entering the mean reversion period we predicted earlier. In the long run, we believe that EigenLayer's re-staking will not be a short-term narrative on the emotional side, but will become a permanent attribute of the Ethereum ecosystem, used to externalize Ethereum's economic security and help projects get started.
According to the above, TVL is not the most core indicator for evaluating EigenLayer, but the quality of AVS is. If more high-quality AVS are built on EigenLayer, then they will definitely bring high returns, and TVL will follow. Therefore, the competition between re-pledge protocols is actually a competition to identify and "invest" in AVS at an early stage. Re-pledge protocols will obviously be a winner-takes-all market.
For the LRT protocol, TVL is certainly one of the explicit indicators to measure the performance of the protocol, but the TVL figure alone cannot summarize the entirety of a protocol. For protocols such as "saving money", the support of users, especially large users, is the core element. Compared with retail investors, large users have more "lazy" funds, are less willing to seek short-term and quick returns, and have a more stable risk appetite, so they are more likely to stay on the platform for a long time. Liquidity is a top priority for large users, which is related to their confidence in the project. Therefore, establishing and maintaining liquidity should be one of the primary goals of the LRT protocol.
4. Investment Logic and Layout
We actively laid out the Staking & Restaking track around the two key time nodes of Ethereum "The Merge" and "Shanghai Upgrade". In general, it is mainly based on the following predictions:
Ethereum "The Merge" means that PoS becomes a permanent attribute of Ethereum, and staking is an indispensable part; after "Shanghai Upgrade", Ethereum staking, as a means of asset management, has changed from "only in but not out" to "both in and out", realizing a closed loop of capital flow. The two landmark events are the basis for our focus on this track.
We believe that the pledge track will inevitably develop in the direction of product diversification. The market favors diversified solutions. As a pioneer and absolute leader in the pledge track, Lido will be more cautious in launching new products due to its sensitive position (the community has repeatedly expressed concerns about Lido's market share exceeding 33%). Therefore, we believe that as other competitors launch differentiated strategies, Lido's market share will show a long-term slow decline.
More than a year has passed, and the market performance has also verified our prediction:
Source: ETH Staking Dashboard by @hildobby
The Ethereum staking rate has increased from about 12% a year ago to 27.28%, a growth rate of 227.3%. In the current Ethereum staking queue, there are 6,425 stakers entering the queue, who need to wait for 3 days and 14 hours; while there is only 1 staker in the exit queue, who almost does not need to wait (data from May 31). It has been in short supply for a long time.
Driven by the Restaking narrative, many LRT protocols (such as Ether.fi, Renzo) have in fact become the top stakers of Ethereum. In addition, institutional-level staking solutions and independent staking solutions are also flourishing. Lido's market share has also dropped from 32.6% at its peak to 28.65%.
5. Conclusion
Source: Justin Drake
Looking back on the development of Ethereum staking and re-staking ecology, we can clearly see that the value of ETH as a multi-functional asset is constantly being strengthened and expanded. From the initial single pricing and Gas function to the diversified roles it plays today, ETH has become an indispensable cornerstone in the crypto economy.
With the continuous expansion of the Ethereum roadmap and the increasing maturity of the staking ecosystem, the role of ETH has become increasingly important in the entire blockchain industry. Through staking and re-staking, ETH not only provides a solid foundation for network security and decentralization, but also demonstrates its unique role in the three major attributes of capital, consumable and value storage assets by expanding economic security and enriching the ecosystem.
In the future, ETH may play a more important role in the following aspects:
As a value anchor for cross-chain ecosystems: Through re-staking protocols such as EigenLayer, ETH has the potential to become the economic security foundation of a multi-chain world.
Promote composable financial innovation: DeFi products based on LST and LRT will be more abundant, providing users with more income and risk management options.
Deepen integration with traditional finance: The access channel provided by ETH ETF and the stability of ETH staking income may attract more institutional investors and promote the integration of crypto assets with traditional financial markets.
A few predictions:
In the future, as the ETH staking rate increases, staking income will gradually decrease, and funds will seek more diversified income structures. As the re-staking solution matures, re-staking will take over the flow of this part of the funds and provide certain additional income. (Just like MEV-Boost has become the default block construction method adopted by almost all validators to increase income) The proportion of ETH involved in re-staking relative to ETH involved in staking will gradually increase.
In the field of re-pledge, due to the flexibility of LRT in asset management, its positioning will gradually expand from a liquidity re-pledge platform to a cross-protocol, cross-ecological "asset management center" and a DeFi Hub that connects the upper and lower levels, and even connects to the real world. For example, Ether.fi has launched its crypto-native credit card, which is linked to its two products, LRT and Liquid. In this process, market leaders have a higher bargaining power when negotiating with upstream and downstream.
We firmly believe that Ethereum will continue to serve as the cornerstone of the decentralized economy, supporting and promoting the widespread adoption of decentralized applications around the world. We will continue to pay close attention to this rapidly developing field and align our investment layout with the future development trend of Ethereum.