To improve the security of EigenLayer and the Omni Network, Omni Network has negotiated a $600 million Ether contract with restaking protocol Ether.Fi.Omni Network stated in an X post from March 4 that the $600 million will aid in securing both the Omni testnet and mainnet.
“Omni is proud to announce a commitment of $600M of staked ETH from @ether_fi to secure the Omni Network. This first-of-its-kind deal positions us at the forefront of the growing restaking ecosystem.”
The goal of Omni Network, a layer-1 interoperability blockchain, is to reduce latency and enhance ecosystem fragmentation by securely connecting Ethereum rollups through restaking.About 33 percent of Ether is represented by the $600 million worth of Ether.The $1.88 billion total value locked (TVL) of Fi.Ether.DefiLlama statistics shows that Fi is currently the largest liquid restaking protocol in the world, with its TVL rising over 163% in the last month.
With over $10.3 billion in TVL, EigenLayer is now the largest Ethereum restaking protocol. The $600 million worth of Ether will be restaked on this platform.
The announcement of a $100 million fundraising round for EigenLayer by venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) was almost two weeks prior to the announcement of the new strategic alliance.In March, Blockchain Capital led a $50 million investment round for the protocol.
EigenLayer was established in 2021 and allows stakers and validators to restake derivative tokens that are designed for liquid staking, such as Lido Staked Ether and RocketPool’s rETH, in order to validate and secure other networks.To increase yield, these assets can potentially be used in other decentralized finance protocols.With a total TVL of $54.7 billion, liquid staking is now the largest protocol category on DefiLlama. Restaking protocols are ranked sixth with a TVL of $10.305 billion.Only EigenLayer’s TVL makes up 99.96% of the $10.305 billion total TVL that is locked in restaking protocols.
After the protocol temporarily lifted its staking cap on February 5 in an effort to encourage organic growth, investor interest in EigenLayer began to soar.EigenLayer’s TVL increased by more than 181% during this restaking time, from just $2.15 billion on February 5 to $6.05 billion on February 10.Although a new staking cap was implemented, the project intends to eventually eliminate this cap permanently.