Re:Staking Weekly #4
Web3's Vertical Integrators, New AVS, and EigenYields Claiming Top 1 Operator Status
Intro
GM friends 👋! Welcome to this week's Re:Staking Weekly. Hope everyone in the US had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
This week, we're diving into one of the major thesis for restaking — exploring why it's becoming increasingly crucial in crypto's new vertical integration trend.
We'll also check out some exciting new AVS and product launches that caught our attention.
Lastly, if you want to catch up with the latest news in restaking world, give our curated X list a follow!
Without further ado, let's dig in!
The Case for Vertical Integraters
As the demand for applications' modular and vertical integration grows, the demand for restaking is likely to soar as well.
This week, the crypto world has been captivated by HyperLiquid, a Layer 1 decentralized exchange that's the hot new kid on the block. Beyond its headline-grabbing 31% token supply airdrop, there's a deeper story unfolding that gets me excited about restaking's future.
Here's the key insight: decentralized products are resurging with full vertical integration, from operators and validators to nodes, networks, and services. But this time, it's different – and here's why:
The New Stack:
User experience is finally king. Modern applications demand flexible architecture that adapts to user needs, not the other way around.
Vertical integration is back, but with a twist. You can now control critical components while experimenting with others.
Restaking is enabling rapid experimentation while maintaining decentralization.
Think of it like this: before, building decentralized apps was like trying to launch a rocket in one go – perfect or bust. Now, with restaking, we're in our SpaceX era. We can test, iterate, and yes, even fail fast while keeping the apps functional and users happy.
We're witnessing a shift from "build everything perfectly" to "build smartly and iterate quickly." We are so back.
News Bites
Yarden from Othentic explains the AVS infrastructure in four key points.
Aligned Layer's ZK Verification Layer is now live, reducing ZK verification costs by 90%.
AltLayer launches 1st security-focused AVS mainnet in the market for GoPlusSecurity.
Sreeram highlights that we have a fleeting opportunity to build AI on crypto rails.
Renzo is introducing ezREZ as a mechanism to supply economic security to AVS.
Restaking in Numbers
EigenYields has just surpassed P2P.org to become the No. 1 operator in terms of total TVL being delegated, with 455.92k ETH. This represents a whopping 50.7% increase in just the past week.
This marks the first time the top spot for operators has changed hands, as P2P.org had consistently held the No. 1 position since EigenLayer's launch.
Will this kickstart operator fee competition? It's worth noting that EigenYields is redistributing 25% of its operator fees (reducing from 10% to 7.5%) back to its users.
Food for Thought
Total stake (both slashable and non-slashable) is a killer feature for decreasing the possibilities of Sybil attacks because it would take too much capital to introduce malicious faults. This turns the most pressing issue in network security into the least important (I'm exaggerating this a bit).
Nonetheless, with abundant total stake guarantees, networks and services can have a renewed lens in thinking about and experimenting with operator compliance, which can take many forms. When slashing is treated only as a last resort and you have numerous other ways to maintain operator fault tolerance, we'll see a plethora of new network modules taking advantage of this fact.
That's it for this week's newsletter! As always, feel free to send us a DM or comment directly below with your thoughts or questions.
If you want to catch up with the latest news in the restaking world, give our curated X list a follow!
See you next week and thanks for reading,