sharedsecurity

The first time I heard the phrase “Actively Validated Services,” I paused. Not because it sounded technical. Crypto is full of technical phrases. I paused because it felt like someone had quietly changed the center of gravity and most people hadn’t noticed. Everyone was still talking about rollups, modular chains, liquid staking. Meanwhile, something underneath the foundation was being rearranged.
Actively Validated Services, or AVS, are built around a simple but loaded idea: what if the security of a blockchain could be reused? Not symbolically. Not loosely. But directly, by letting the same validators who secure a base chain also secure other services. Instead of spinning up new validator sets from scratch, you tap into existing stake and extend it outward.
On the surface, that sounds like efficiency. Underneath, it is a shift in how trust is manufactured in crypto.
To see why this matters, start with the problem. Every decentralized service that needs trust - data availability layers, oracle networks, bridges, middleware - has to answer one question: who watches the watchers? Traditionally, each of these systems builds its own validator network. That means new tokens, new staking incentives, new attack surfaces. Security becomes fragmented. A bridge might have a few hundred million dollars in value passing through it but only a fraction of that securing it.
Actively Validated Services change the math. Through protocols like EigenLayer on Ethereum, validators can “restake” their ETH. That means the same capital securing Ethereum’s base layer can also be pledged to secure additional services. If they misbehave, they can be slashed not just at the service level, but at the base stake level.
Ethereum itself has over 30 million ETH staked - worth tens of billions of dollars depending on price. That figure matters because it represents economic weight. When an AVS taps into that pool, it inherits not just validators but the economic gravity behind them. Suddenly a new oracle network is not bootstrapping from zero. It is leaning on a security budget that took years to accumulate.
But that surface layer hides something deeper. What is really being reused is not just stake. It is credibility.
Validators on Ethereum have already proven something. They have locked up capital, run infrastructure, accepted the risk of slashing. Their incentives are tied to the health of the chain. When those validators opt into an AVS, they are extending their reputation. If they misbehave in one service, they jeopardize their standing in the entire ecosystem.
That layering creates new possibilities. A data availability service, for example, can launch without issuing a highly inflationary token to attract security. Instead, it can pay restakers for additional work. The cost of security becomes more variable, more market-driven. In theory, this lowers barriers to launching new trust-based services.
Yet every time we compress trust into a smaller number of actors, we also concentrate risk.
If a handful of large staking providers control a significant share of restaked ETH, and those providers opt into the same AVSs, you get correlation. A failure in one service could trigger slashing events that ripple back to Ethereum’s base layer. What looks like efficiency can become systemic exposure.
When I first looked at this, I thought the main question was economic. How much yield will restakers earn? Early AVSs have floated additional yield percentages on top of base staking rewards that hover around 3 to 5 percent annually. Add a few extra points and you create strong incentives. But the yield is not free. It is compensation for additional risk. The more services you validate, the more places you can fail.
The deeper question is architectural. Ethereum has been moving toward modularity - separating execution, settlement, and data availability. Rollups handle execution. Ethereum handles settlement. Data availability layers handle storage. AVSs sit in the middle of that modular stack. They allow specialized services to plug into shared security without becoming full blockchains themselves.
On the surface, that makes the ecosystem more flexible. Underneath, it creates a meta-layer of coordination. Validators are no longer just block producers. They are service providers in a marketplace of validation tasks.
Understanding that helps explain why AVS is not just a feature. It is a business model.
An AVS can define its own rules - what validators must check, how often, what constitutes misbehavior. It can set fees. It can design slashing conditions. Validators then decide whether the extra yield justifies the added operational complexity. This is crypto turning security into a menu.
Critics argue that this blurs boundaries that were once clean. Ethereum’s base layer was supposed to be minimal, focused on consensus and settlement. Restaking extends its security into domains it does not directly govern. If an AVS fails catastrophically, even if Ethereum itself remains technically sound, the reputational damage could spill over. Users do not always distinguish between layers.
There is also the question of governance. Who decides which AVSs are safe enough to restake into? In theory, it is up to each validator. In practice, large staking pools may curate options for their users. That reintroduces quiet centralization. If most restaked ETH flows through a few platforms, their risk assessments shape the entire ecosystem.
Still, the momentum is real. Billions of dollars in ETH have already been restaked through EigenLayer, even before many AVSs are fully live. That tells you something about appetite. Yield is part of it. But so is belief that shared security is more capital efficient than every project reinventing its own validator wheel.
Zoom out and you see a pattern. Crypto started with isolated chains, each sovereign. Then came bridges, trying to connect them, often with fragile security. Then modular designs, breaking chains into components. AVSs are another step in that direction. Instead of sovereignty everywhere, we get layered interdependence.
That interdependence has texture. It can make the system stronger by aligning incentives across services. If validators have more to lose, they may behave more carefully. At the same time, it ties fates together. A mistake is no longer contained.
What strikes me is how this mirrors traditional finance in a quiet way. Banks reuse capital through rehypothecation. The same collateral backs multiple obligations. It increases efficiency. It also creates chains of dependency that only become visible in stress. Restaking is not identical, but the logic rhymes. One pool of capital supports multiple layers of activity.
If this holds, AVSs could become the default way new crypto services launch. Instead of issuing a token and praying for enough honest validators, they plug into an existing security base and focus on product. That lowers friction. It also means the base layer becomes even more systemically important.
And maybe that is the real shift. Actively Validated Services are not just about extra yield or clever engineering. They are about turning blockchains into security platforms. The base chain becomes a steady foundation, and everything else builds upward by borrowing its weight.
The question is not whether that is efficient. It clearly is. The question is whether we understand the cost of tying so many promises to the same stake.
Because when security becomes a shared resource, strength compounds. So does fragility.#ActivelyValidatedServices
#Restaking
#Ethereum
#SharedSecurity
#CryptoInfrastructure $BTC $ETH $BNB

Restaking-ul este adesea comercializat ca o îmbunătățire a staking-ului.

În realitate, nu este vorba despre tehnologie — este vorba despre designul pieței.

Pe măsură ce mai multe protocoale concurează pentru securitate comună și mai mult capital curge în activele restaked, adevărata întrebare nu este dacă restaking-ul funcționează.

Adevărata întrebare este:

Cine decide unde merg încrederea și capitalul?

Aceasta este problema pe care Lorenzo Protocol a încercat să o rezolve.

De ce neutralitatea nu este opțională

Neutralitatea nu este un slogan.

Este ceva ce un sistem trebuie să dovedească prin designul său.

Pe măsură ce restaking-ul devine infrastructură de bază — nu o noutate — orice protocol care injectează opinii, preferințe sau favoritism în alocarea capitalului devine fragil. Când prejudecata intră în sistem, încrederea părăsește încet sistemul.