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.