After ether.fi was launched on Binance and saw strong market pull, many people turned their attention back to the liquidity restaking track.

On the evening of April 23, Binance officially announced that the liquidity re-pledge agreement Renzo (EZ) will become the 53rd project for the platform's new coin mining.

Starting from 8:00 am Beijing time on April 24, users can invest BNB and FDUSD into Launchpool to obtain EZ rewards. EZ mining will last for a total of 6 days. The Launchpool website will be updated before the mining activity opens.

After Launchpool ends, Binance will list Renzo (EZ) at 20:00 on April 30th (GMT+8), and open EZ/BTC, EZ/USDT, EZ/BNB, EZ/FDUSD and EZ/TRY trading markets. EZ will be subject to seed tag trading rules.

1. The restaking narrative is hot, and the track can be called a blue ocean market

Restaking can be regarded as a hot topic in 2024, and its popularity is comparable to AI and DEPIN. This concept, first proposed by Eigenlayer, hopes to achieve security sharing among various Rollups, side chains and middleware (DA Layer/bridge/oracle, etc.), thereby further maintaining the network security of Ethereum.

How big is the current Restaking market? According to statistics, the number of Ethereum staked is 29,235,511, with an amount of approximately US$67 billion, of which Liquid Staking accounts for 37.1% and the total amount is US$24.7 billion. In Liquid Staking, Lido accounts for 85.2%, accounting for 31.5% of all staked Ethereum. The current ETH Balance of the Eigenlayer ecosystem is 277,746, and the Total Balance is US$550 million. Compared with Liquid Staking, the entire ecosystem has 50 times the growth space.

2. TVL exceeds 100 million US dollars in 3 months after launch. What are the highlights of the emerging unicorn Renzo?

Renzo is a liquidity re-staking protocol based on the EigenLayer ecosystem, which aims to simplify complex staking mechanisms for end users and achieve rapid cooperation with EigenLayer node operators and Active Verification Services (AVS).

According to the project team, unlike traditional staking, Renzo allows users to obtain higher returns. By introducing the derivative token ezETH, Renzo effectively releases the liquidity of re-staking ETH. Secondly, it uses advanced algorithms to balance returns and risks in real time, thereby automatically making the best configuration choices for users and ensuring a stable and substantial return on investment.

In a nutshell, Renzo is the LRT (Liquid Restaking Token) of the Eigenlayer ecosystem. By providing node services and risk management, it can provide higher returns than staking native ETH and unlock the liquidity of restaking.

Renzo announced the launch of its mainnet in October last year, and in just the third month after its launch, its TVL exceeded $100 million, a development that is jaw-droppingly rapid. According to DefiLlama data, Renzo’s current TVL is $3.288 billion, ranking second only to ether.fi ($3.777 billion) in the same track.

3. Received investment from Binance Labs, OKX Ventures, etc., and has many cooperative projects

According to the encrypted data platform RootData, Binance Labs participated in the investment in Renzo. In January this year, Renzo announced the completion of a $3.2 million seed round of financing, led by Maven11, with participation from OKX Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Figment Capital, SevenX Ventures, etc. OKX Ventures said that this is its first officially announced investment project in the EigenLayer ecosystem.

Like LSD, Restaking also attaches great importance to the business cooperation track (BD Game). At present, Renzo has reached cooperation with first-line projects such as Figment, Gauntlet, Biconomy, Balancer and Wormhole, and has the former Lido BD director as a project consultant.

4. The proportion of token circulation is low, and it is expected to replicate the strong upward trend of ether.fi

The total supply of EZ will be 10 billion, and the circulating supply at the time of listing will be 1.05 billion, accounting for about 10.50% of the total token supply. The specific distribution mechanism is as follows:

Binance Launchpool will allocate 2.50%;

The airdrop will allocate 10.00%;

Investors and advisors will be allocated 31.56%;

The team will be allocated 20.00%;

The foundation will allocate 13.44%;

The DAO Treasury will be allocated 20.00%;

2.50% will be allocated to the liquidity budget.


Judging from the token unlocking process, the entire EZ will remain in a low circulation state until next year. The token supply will mainly consist of Binance Launchpool and airdrop shares. Even if it enters the acceleration stage, it will be at the earliest in the first quarter of next year. The upward channel has been opened.

5. How will Renzo seize market share after listing on Binance?

In January, Renzo launched the Renzo ezPoints program to reward users who contribute to the protocol. One way to earn points is by minting ezETH, which serves as Renzo's liquidity re-staking token. ezETH can automatically earn rewards and ensure liquidity, allowing users to participate in DeFi while retaining re-staking rewards. There is no limit on token deposits in Renzo, which is one of the main factors for its TVL surge.

According to its founder Lucas Kozinski, Renzo's development plan is divided into three phases and will take one to one and a half years:

The first is to increase and distribute liquidity. Currently, Renzo is in this stage, having integrated more than 50 DeFi protocols and launched native re-staking on multiple Layer2s;

The second phase will focus on improving efficiency and solving the gas cost problem on Eigenlayer to increase yield;

The third phase is to enable AVS’s “Slashing” function to build investment portfolios and perform risk management in the next 6 to 12 months.

Currently, Renzo has partnered with companies such as Gauntlet to establish a risk and portfolio construction framework to capture market share and win user trust.


6. Value Ambition: Will Renzo surpass ether.fi?

As two direct competitors in the liquidity re-staking track, Renzo and ether.fi have many similarities in addition to overlaps in business types.

  • First, the TVL of the two is almost the same. According to Defillama data, the current TVL of ether.fi is 3.8 billion US dollars, ranking first in the LRT track; Renzo's TVL is 3.3 billion US dollars, ranking second in the LRT track.

  • Second, the initial circulation ratios of the two tokens ETHFI and EZ are almost the same. The initial circulation supply of ETHFI is 115.2 million, accounting for about 11.52% of the total token supply; the initial circulation supply of EZ will be 1.05 billion, accounting for about 10.50% of the total token supply.

  • Third, the first launch channels for both tokens ETHFI and EZ are Binance Launchpool

Based on the above points, with the current real-time price of ETHFI at $3.9, the reasonable price of Renzo should be around $0.39. However, based on ETHFI's previous strong performance, we have reason to imagine that the price of Renzo will rise.

7. Summary

For many people, Restaking is nothing more than a nesting doll model. LRT (Liquid Restaking Token) is a nesting doll version of LST (Liquid Staking Token). Staking ETH gets LST, and staking LST for the second time gets LRT. LRT can be used for financial operations such as staking, lending, etc. Every additional staking is an opportunity to use liquidity to gain returns. However, Renzo's LRT protocol also supports direct native restaking (Native Restaking) to Eigenlayer, thereby bypassing the current Eigenlayer's maximum TVL limit for each LST type. Perhaps this is the fundamental reason for winning the LRT War.