DeFi
What are the challenges of the most popular DeFi sector?
In this edition of the Bloomberg Crypto newsletter, Sidhartha Shukla describes the stakes of the fight for the resttaking of cryptocurrencies.
Perhaps the hottest innovation in cryptocurrency right now is resttaking, which amplifies the returns you get from securing a blockchain by allowing the digital tokens used in the process to power multiple applications at once.
The leader in this segment of decentralized finance is EigenLayer, which has accumulated more than $14 billion in assets since its launch a year ago and whose backers include well-known venture capitalist a16z crypto.
EigenLayer uses software (or smart contracts) to enable the reactivation of Ether tokens and has become almost synonymous with the nascent sector, such is its success. But a competitor has now emerged in the form of Symbiotic, whose investors include venture capital firm Paradigm as well as Cyber.Fund.
Symbiotic launched last month and attracted over $1 billion in assets in a matter of weeks, a figure that took EigenLayer months to reach, according to data from DefiLlama. The protocol allows for the re-staking of a multitude of tokens compatible with the Ethereum blockchain, while EigenLayer focuses on Ether and some of its derivatives.