What is restaking?
Restaking is a cryptoeconomic primitive (popularised by EigenLayer, 2023) that lets ETH already staked on Ethereum’s Beacon Chain be reused as economic security for additional services: bridges, oracles, sequencers, data availability layers, app-specific blockchains. The same ETH stake earns multiple yield streams while exposing stakers to additional slashing conditions defined by each restaked service (“Actively Validated Service”: AVS).
Mechanics
- Native restaking: validators set their withdrawal credentials to an EigenLayer smart contract, opting into AVS slashing.
- LST restaking: liquid staking tokens (stETH, rETH, cbETH) deposited into EigenLayer; lower friction.
- Operators: run AVS node software on behalf of restakers; receive delegated stake.
- AVS: services that pay restakers/operators for economic security (EigenDA, Lagrange, Hyperlane, Brevis).
- LRT (Liquid Restaking Token): Ether.fi eETH, Renzo ezETH, Kelp rsETH: tokenised restaking position for composability.
Risks
- Compounding slashing: a single operator’s misbehaviour can slash stake across multiple AVS.
- Cascading failures: correlated AVS slashing could threaten Ethereum L1 security if restaking scales too aggressively (Vitalik Buterin’s concern).
- Smart contract risk: EigenLayer and LRT contracts are new attack surface.
- Operator centralisation: large LRT issuers concentrate restaking decisions.
Extra yield, extra slashing
Restaking, popularised by the EigenLayer model, lets already-staked ETH be re-used to help secure additional protocols (known as actively validated services) in return for extra rewards. The appeal is capital efficiency: one pool of staked capital earning multiple layers of yield. The catch is that risk compounds in step with reward: the same staked ETH is now subject to the slashing conditions of every service it secures, so a fault in any one of them can cut into the principal. Economically the activity starts to resemble a layered, leveraged financial product, which is why regulators and advisers ask how it should be characterised and disclosed. Anyone restaking, or building a service that relies on restaked security, should map exactly which slashing conditions and which operators their capital is exposed to.
Regulatory Position in Turkey
Turkish DeFi users tend to view LRTs as a way to optimise Ethereum yield, but the chain of slashing risk and the complexity of LRT smart contracts are significant. The Capital Markets Board (SPK) and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) have not issued specific regulation on restaking services; the CASP regime (Law No. 7518) applies directly only where CASPs act as intermediaries for restaking.
Risk Management in Practice
- Diversify across AVSs and prefer LRTs with transparent operator selection.
- Do not stack LRTs into further DeFi leverage loops without modelling cascade scenarios: restaking combined with lending and leveraged farming compounds correlated risk.