In the staking arena, data shows that the TVL of the Ethereum re-staking protocol based on EigenLayer has reached 3.8 billion US dollars. Among them, the ether.fi protocol sits firmly at the top with a TVL of 1.3 billion US dollars, and its growth rate in the past month has exceeded 280%. However, recently, ether.fi has been embroiled in controversy over "stealing points".

Eigen Layer Shrinks by Half, Where Does the Integration Go?

On February 19th, a community member reported that when the amount and duration of staking were the same, ether.fi had about 10% less eigenlayer points than Renzo Protocol. However, it was pointed out that this may be due to differences in the staking mechanism.

Today, it was calculated by a member that the TVL of ether.fi is 1.42 billion, while the TVL of Renzo Protocol is 364.36 million, only about 1/4 of ether.fi's TVL. However, the points on ether.fi are only 1.81 times that of Renzo Protocol. If we calculate the points on ether.fi based on the TVL-to-points ratio of Renzo Protocol and EigenLayer, the points on ether.fi should be about twice as much as currently displayed. This difference cannot be explained by different staking mechanisms, but ether.fi has not responded to this issue before.

Half of the points are missing, where did the missing points go? This discovery has sparked discussions in the community, but there has been no response. Community members have raised this issue to the level of team integrity and work style. In ether.fi's Discord community, someone replied to a member who found their points reduced, saying, "If you only lost 10k points, then you are still lucky." On Twitter, early supporters of ether.fi also said they were "not surprised at all."

Team Response: Different Staking Mechanisms, Front-end Total Points Display Error

Why do points disappear for no reason? Does "point theft" really exist on ether.fi? BlockBeats has sought verification from the ether.fi team regarding this incident and has obtained an exclusive response.

The ether.fi team initially explained this situation as the platform's ETH liquidity management strategy. The EigenLayer points obtained by users pledging ETH will be transferred directly to the user 100%, but the ETH received by ether.fi is not immediately pledged. Instead, it is stored in the form of a liquidity pool, and users can withdraw ETH immediately and transfer it within and outside the protocol. Therefore, under normal circumstances, users will not receive 24 points every day.

To earn 24 points every day, the only way is to join EigenPod. However, this method will result in missing out on opportunities to participate in other DeFi protocols. Since other liquidity staking protocols usually do not offer withdrawal functions, ether.fi may appear "special".

But does the difference in collateral mechanisms result in such a large difference?

Shortly after explaining the pledge mechanism, the ether.fi team once again told BlockBeats that the points displayed on the protocol homepage were indeed incorrect, and the actual EigenLayer points obtained by users were much higher than the currently incorrectly displayed data. The number of points each user sees on their own dashboard is completely correct, and only the total on the homepage is not reported correctly. The ether.fi team will solve this problem tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the ethet.fi team has also apologized and responded to members who raised concerns about the reduction of points on Twitter and Discord, and the "point shrinkage" crisis has been temporarily resolved.

LRT Track Points Battle Continues

The LRT track is bullish due to its three key elements: innovative technology, printing opportunities, and engaging narratives, and LRT offers higher ETH yields. With LRT, users can earn Ethereum staking yields (~5%) + Eigenlayer re-staking rewards (~10%) + LRT protocol token emissions (~10% and more). When Eigenlayer is fully launched, ETH yields are expected to reach about 25%.

Although Lido has taken a leading position in the LST field, the competition in the LRT field has just begun with the emergence of numerous LRT protocols.

In the first stage of this competition, points became the main weapon. Puffer is a good example. As a newcomer, Puffer provided triple points to those who extracted stETH from Eigenlayer and deposited it into Puffer for re-staking, which greatly increased its market share to 22%, ranking second.

As a project supported by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, ether.fi has created LRT eETH through EigenLayer's local re-collateralization. Currently, eETH holds a leading position in the LRT market with a market share (MS) of 39%. In fact, the total locked value (TVL) of eETH in Eigenlayer even exceeds that of stETH.

除了权益奖励和在 DeFi 中使用 eETH 的可能性外，这种循环流动还使存款人能够同时获得 ether.fi 忠诚积分和 EigenLayer 再质押积分，两者都可能涉及到空投资格。据悉，截止到 2 月 10 日，EtherFi 从其国库中为新存款者提供了 200 万 Eigenlayer 积分（在 EtherFi 积分之外）。

Following in the footsteps of Puffer, various LRT protocols have also launched incentive programs. Among them, Eigenpie, which entered the market relatively late, proposed that users can receive double the points within the first 15 days (until February 12th). The points will be used for airdropping EGP tokens, which account for 10% of the total supply. With this measure, Eigenpie quickly accumulated a TVL of 184 million US dollars and captured a market share of 6%.

Related reading: "EigenLayer's Risk and Best Practices for Re-Staking".

Since points mean airdrop expectations, the act of "stealing" points naturally sparks community discussions. However, in addition to this, because most of the Restaking protocols on the market are built on EigenLayer, participating in Restaking means exposing oneself to the following risks for users. After all, if the EigenLayer contract is attacked, the related project funds will also be lost.

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