Společnost ether.fi po akvizici vybraných aktiv služby Zeal zahájila dobrovolnou migraci uživatelů na svůj účet a kartu. Kartové služby Zealu budou ukončeny do 20. prosince 2026.
On October 23, 2026, ether.fi announced its acquisition of Zeal and opened an in-app route for Zeal users to move to its account and card product. Zeal says the deal covers selected assets, not user accounts, keys or funds, as its wallet winds down.
The move is optional. In its own announcement, Zeal said: “You choose what to move, and nothing moves automatically.” Its follow-up statement describes ether.fi as a self-custodial Visa option for users whose Zeal wallet and Gnosis Pay card services are ending.
Gnosis Pay’s migration guide says Zeal’s card services will be wound up by December 20, 2026. The guide also describes other ways to keep a Gnosis Pay account. Zeal users can choose those routes instead of moving to ether.fi.
What moves to ether.fi
The live migration page sets out four steps. Users start from the Zeal home screen and supply an email address. Entering the emailed six-digit code creates an ether.fi account. Zeal then moves the selected balance and assets into the new account. The final step is identity verification with ether.fi, followed by setting up the card.
Supported assets move across unchanged. Unsupported assets are converted during the move, incurring network fees and potentially losing some value in the conversion. The page invites users to bring their whole balance, but warns that conversion can reduce its value. It supplies neither a conversion quote nor an asset-by-asset migration table.
Opening the account creates a separate legal relationship with ether.fi. The migration page says ether.fi and Zeal remain separate companies. Users of the new account come under ether.fi’s terms and privacy policy. Eligibility, availability, fees, limits and restrictions apply; crypto assets can lose value and returns from earning products are not guaranteed. Identity verification is required before all features become available.
Keeping access to the existing Safe
Before Zeal users lose access to the old interface, Gnosis Pay’s guide tells them to add another wallet they control as a second owner of their Safe. It gives MetaMask and Rabby as examples. It says this lets them sign into the Gnosis Pay web app with that wallet and manage the account, including withdrawals. Without it, transactions still require signatures inside Zeal.
The same guide warns users taking its partner-migration route to withdraw assets from Zeal’s earn product back to their balance first. Assets left in earn will not be picked up. It specifically says Rebind’s migration tool moves assets on Gnosis and Base automatically. Those instructions describe the Gnosis Pay partner route; ether.fi’s migration page does not give equivalent detail about handling existing earn positions.
For EUR cardholders, Gnosis Pay recommends Rebind. Its guide says the account, IBAN and card carry over without new identity checks, with the existing card unchanged at that stage. Users choosing ether.fi’s published flow create a new account and complete verification before setting up the card.
Gnosis Pay describes its partner transition as a staged process. Some partner apps initially import the existing card and Safe setup. Later, when the partner programme goes live, users accept new terms and receive a partner card, with advance notice. Where the partner supports importing the existing card, users keep it for the initial move, with the replacement card coming later in the transition.
Spending balances or borrowing against them
Ether.fi’s Direct Pay documentation lists $USDC, $USDT, $EURC and $frxUSD as spendable stablecoins. It also lists Liquid USD, Liquid RWA, Liquid Reserve and Liquid EUR vault balances. Card payments can draw directly from those vault balances without a prior withdrawal.
The Set Spend Priority control selects which balance pays first. If that balance cannot cover a purchase, the card uses another balance that can. The documentation lists these assets for spending in the destination product. It does not list every asset supported by the Zeal migration.
Users who borrow also take on lending and collateral risk. According to ether.fi’s Borrow guide, eligible assets are supplied to a dedicated onchain lending market managed by ether.fi, earning variable rates determined by supply and demand. Eligible assets act as collateral automatically, and each has its own loan-to-value limit. Both the assets in the portfolio and their total value determine how much a user can borrow.
Loans must remain overcollateralized. Reaching the liquidation threshold shown in the app triggers the automatic liquidation of some collateral to restore the position. Limits on new borrowing cannot prevent market movements from pushing a position toward that threshold. Borrow can be switched off in settings once no borrowed amount remains outstanding, leaving the card operating in Direct Pay.
The terms of use separate protocol lending from the card issuer. They describe overcollateralized credit through decentralized borrowing protocols, with borrowing eligibility and limits set by protocol parameters. The issuer supplies the card used to access that credit; it does not originate the protocol loan.
Cashback has separate conditions
Ether.fi’s Zeal page advertises 3% cashback on eligible purchases up to the applicable monthly limit. The acquisition announcement advertises up to 4%. The migration page does not explain what would qualify a migrating user for the higher advertised rate.
The cashback programme terms exclude ATM withdrawals, peer-to-peer payments, tax payments, currency exchange services, gift cards and other cash equivalents. They also permit reversal of rewards after a refund, cancellation or chargeback, including by debiting the account, reducing future rewards or reducing the refund by the original reward’s dollar value.
The migration page has not published an asset-by-asset conversion schedule or explained how existing Zeal earn positions are treated in its own flow. Gnosis Pay’s stated December 20 deadline covers Zeal card services; ether.fi’s page gives no separate closing date for its migration offer.
The MIT-born startup says 16 node operators now run its mump2p software on Ethereum mainnet for more than 1.4 million ETH in stake, and that blocks arrive faster than over Ethereum's default gossip layer.
Ether.fi makes Optimum's mump2p mandatory for its node operators
Posted October 20, 2026 at 11:30 am ET.
Optimum, a networking startup run by MIT professor Muriel Médard, said Tuesday that its block-propagation software, mump2p, is in production on Ethereum mainnet, and that liquid restaking provider ether.fi now requires every one of its 12 node operators to use it.
The company counted 16 node operators on the protocol, running roughly 22,000 validator keys with more than 1.4 million ETH at stake. Optimum put that at over 3% of all ETH staked. Operators it named include Blockdaemon, Everstake, P2P.org, Stakefish and Bitcoin Suisse.
Ether.fi, which announced a blockspace deal with ETHGas in April, had previously left the software optional for its operators, according to Optimum. “We don’t mandate new infrastructure across our entire validator set unless we’re confident it raises the bar for our stakers and for the network,” said Rok Kopp, ether.fi’s co-founder and chief growth officer, in the announcement.
Optimum also gave a dollar figure of about $3.7 billion in what it calls “Total Value Boosted,” a metric of its own that the announcement does not define.
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Speed Figures Come From Optimum Ethereum validators lose attestation and MEV rewards when they see a block late, and Optimum argues that validators far from major hosting hubs pay the most. Its pitch is a faster path for blocks between nodes: mump2p runs as an added channel next to Ethereum’s standard gossip rather than replacing it, the company wrote in August, and encodes data using random linear network coding, a technique the company says was co-invented at MIT.
By Optimum’s own early mainnet measurements, blocks arrived 2.42 times faster than with GossipSub, the peer-to-peer messaging protocol Ethereum’s consensus layer uses by default, and arrival-time variance was about 7.88 times lower. The company said mump2p users got the block first in nine of 10 measurements. The numbers are self-reported, and the announcement did not say how they were gathered. The same two multiples appeared in an Optimum-sponsored Four Pillars report in August, which described a test across 30 gateways while the company was still preparing its mainnet integration.
Médard framed the case in trading terms in the announcement: “In traditional finance, firms spend billions shaving milliseconds off execution because speed is money.”
From Testnet to Production Optimum ran a private testnet with seven operators in June 2025, two months after raising an $11 million seed round led by 1kx. It says connecting is free and permissionless, needs no changes to consensus or execution software, and takes one engineer less than an hour. In August, however, Optimum described the network as permissioned for now, with operators connecting through an API key it issued. The company said it plans to bring the protocol to other high-throughput blockchains after Ethereum.
Related Listen: Bits + Bips: Should Ethereum Really Burn Its Staking Yield to Zero?
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
SharpLink nasadil 400 mil. USD ze své rezervy v ETH přímo na blockchainu: po 200 mil. USD do Ether.fi a Lido Finance, přičemž Anchorage Digital působí jako správce.
SharpLink (Nasdaq: SBET) has confirmed its first major onchain deployment, $200 million with Ether.fi and $200 million with Lido Finance, with Anchorage Digital serving as custodian for both positions.
The Nasdaq-listed Ethereum treasury firm shared the news via its official X account on October 19, 2026, describing the move as putting its ETH “to work every day.”
The SharpLink ETH deployment marks a shift from passive accumulation to active, yield-generating onchain strategy, a benchmark the company says others in institutional finance can now follow.
From Treasury Build to Active Yield: Inside the $400M Onchain Strategy SharpLink’s treasury thesis has been consistent since the company pivoted to an Ethereum-first model. Accumulate ETH. Make it productive. Compound yields. Increase ETH per share.
The $400 million SharpLink ETH deployment is the clearest execution of that thesis yet.
Anyone can own $ETH. We know how to put it to work.
Over the last year, Sharplink has done roughly $500M worth of deals to put ETH to work across the ecosystem.
These include staking deployments, a dedicated onchain yield fund, and investments for the teams leading Ethereum’s… pic.twitter.com/Ecjuz7n6wn
— Sharplink (@Sharplink) October 19, 2026
The Lido allocation fulfils a plan announced in August 2026. Under that arrangement, SharpLink stakes $200 million and receives wstETH, a liquid token that earns staking rewards while remaining deployable in DeFi, custodied by Anchorage.
CEO Joseph Chalom described the move then as “an exciting expansion in making our ETH even more productive.”
Lido holds roughly $16.5 billion in staked ETH, with wstETH integrated across more than 100 protocols. That scale, and the infrastructure around it, made Lido the natural partner for institutional-grade staking.
The Ether.fi allocation extends a separate line of work involving liquid restaking and weETH instruments.
Both positions sit inside a public-company balance sheet with Big 4 audit oversight, a structure SharpLink has consistently highlighted as the institutional standard.
This latest move builds on a longer capital deployment effort. In early August, SharpLink committed $100 million of its staked ETH to the Galaxy SharpLink Onchain Yield Fund, a $125 million vehicle Galaxy manages to pursue onchain yield strategies and emerging protocol investments.
Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy, said the launch reflects institutional investors moving “from passive ownership toward active participation in blockchain-based markets.”
SharpLink now reports institutional ownership of approximately 60%, up roughly 12 percentage points, with Fidelity, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and Vanguard among its holders.
The depth of that institutional base reflects confidence in a treasury model built around productive ETH, not passive holding.
Liquid Staking Leaders and a Widening Institutional Playbook Lido and Ether.fi occupy different but complementary roles in Ethereum’s staking infrastructure.
Lido remains the dominant liquid staking platform by total value locked. Ether.fi leads in liquid restaking, giving depositors exposure to both base staking yield and additional reward layers.
Splitting the $400 million evenly across both protocols gives SharpLink diversified exposure to Ethereum’s productive layer.
Lido has also been expanding its footprint. The protocol launched ETH staking across four Layer-2 networks, Arbitrum, Base, Linea, and Optimism, using Chainlink CCIP, a move that deepens the liquidity reach of wstETH well beyond Ethereum mainnet. SharpLink’s deployment lands as that expansion gains traction.
Meanwhile, efforts to give retail investors direct stETH exposure through regulated products have stalled.
VanEck withdrew its proposed Lido staked Ethereum ETF registration with the SEC, leaving institutional deployments like SharpLink’s as the more accessible path for large allocators today.
SharpLink is not alone among listed companies treating ETH as a productive asset. BitMine has been a consistent buyer and staker, with its ETH accumulation continuing even as BMNR stock faced pressure.
The peer comparison underscores a broader shift: treasury firms are increasingly benchmarked not just on how much ETH they hold, but on how much yield that ETH generates.
On the traditional finance side, banks are also deepening their Ethereum commitments, JPMorgan recently expanded its JPM Coin deposit token to the Ethereum network, a further signal of the institutional drift toward productive on-chain infrastructure.
For SBET equity holders, the metric that matters most now is ETH-per-share compounding. The SharpLink ETH deployment is live. The protocols are running.
The question is how quickly the realized yields, and any further deployment tranches, show up in disclosed performance metrics. Watch for SharpLink’s next quarterly update and any X posts from the company on early yield data.
Ether.fi převede celou svou platební infrastrukturu na platformu MoonPay, včetně fiatových vkladů a výběrů, mezisíťového obchodování a virtuálních bankovních účtů.
Ether.fi, the self-custodial crypto neobank reporting more than $6 billion in assets under management, has announced a partnership that will move its entire payments infrastructure onto MoonPay‘s integrated stack. The deal covers fiat onramps and offramps, cross-chain trading, institutional-grade virtual bank accounts and crypto deposits, all without requiring users to surrender control of their private keys. The announcement was made on 6 October 2026. MoonPay, which says it serves more than 35 million customers across 180 countries and holds regulatory licences in multiple jurisdictions including the United States, will supply four products: Headless Ramps, which embed fiat entry and exit flows natively inside the ether.fi app without redirects; MoonPay Trade for cross-chain routing and asset conversion; MoonPay Enterprise for virtual bank accounts supporting ACH, Fedwire, SWIFT, Faster Payments, SEPA and Open Banking rails; and MoonPay Crypto Deposits for inbound transfers from external wallets and centralised exchanges. The four products will roll out progressively to ether.fi’s user base over the coming months.
The structural problem being solved Rok Kopp, co-founder and chief growth officer of ether.fi The core friction the partnership targets is well known in self-custodial product design. Where a traditional neobank can bundle its card, bank account and funding flows through a single compliance check, a self-custodial platform has historically been forced to source those functions from separate vendors. The result is that users face repeated identity verification steps, and the transaction experience breaks at the handoff between the app and an outside provider. Ether.fi and MoonPay say that by consolidating onto one infrastructure layer, a user completes verification once and that credential carries across products, subject to local regulatory requirements.
Rok Kopp, co-founder and chief growth officer of ether.fi, framed the benchmark clearly: “The bar for ether.fi isn’t other crypto products. It’s whatever banking app a user opens every morning. Every integration we make is measured against that standard.”
Spending data and market positioning The release includes transaction data attributed to Paymentscan, an on-chain card-tracking service. According to those figures, ether.fi card users spent $123.7 million across 1.5 million transactions in September 2026, up from $24.1 million in the same month a year earlier, a more than fivefold increase. Since launching in April 2025, cumulative card spend is reported at $918.1 million across 11.6 million transactions. The company says card volume growth has been largely uncorrelated with bitcoin price movements over the same period, citing months in which its volume rose while bitcoin fell by double digits.
The third-party source for that data, Paymentscan, is not a widely cited industry benchmark, so the figures should be treated as company-provided rather than independently verified. Editors may wish to seek corroboration before publishing them as established facts.
Regulatory read-across The regulatory architecture underpinning the partnership is worth noting. Ether.fi’s self-custodial model means it does not hold user funds in the way a licensed deposit-taking institution would, which has historically allowed it to expand across markets without obtaining a banking licence in each jurisdiction. MoonPay’s licensed fiat-rail infrastructure handles the regulated perimeter. That division of labour is commercially efficient but sits under intensifying scrutiny. In the EU, MiCA’s stablecoin and crypto-asset service provider frameworks impose new obligations on entities facilitating fiat-to-crypto flows, and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority is advancing its own cryptoasset registration and market regime. How the compliance boundary between Ether.fi and MoonPay is drawn will matter as those frameworks come into force.
The broader embedded-finance and digital-asset payments segment is crowded, with several infrastructure providers competing for neobank integration contracts. MoonPay’s differentiation here rests on the breadth of its licensed coverage and the unified KYC layer, which removes the multi-verification problem that has blunted rival self-custodial products. Whether the single-verification promise holds in practice across all supported jurisdictions will be the commercial test.
AI level 1 of 5: written by Darlyn Ho; AI helped with tone, structure or wording; edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean
Ether.fi přesouvá platební infrastrukturu na MoonPay, aby v jediné aplikaci spojilo vklady a výběry fiat měn, cross-chain swapy, virtuální účty a vklady kryptoměn.
Ether.fi is moving its core payments infrastructure onto MoonPay’s integrated stack, the two companies said on October 6, as the crypto neobank works to make a self-custodial wallet feel as simple as a mainstream banking app. The move folds on-ramps and off-ramps, cross-chain trading, virtual accounts, and crypto deposits into a single experience, according to the joint announcement.
Ether.fi, which reports more than $6 billion in assets under management across its Cash, Stake, and Liquid products, will replace payments functions it previously sourced from separate vendors. The shift builds on the neobank upgrade ether.fi rolled out earlier this year. Users complete identity verification once, and that check carries across the card, account, and on-ramp instead of restarting for each product.
Four MoonPay Products Inside the App MoonPay Headless Ramps embed on- and off-ramp flows directly in the app, so users can fund an account in one tap without redirects to a third party. MoonPay Trade handles cross-chain routing for in-app conversions. MoonPay Enterprise assigns each user a virtual account with account and routing numbers, supporting ACH, Fedwire, SWIFT, Faster Payments, SEPA, and Open Banking so paychecks and transfers can settle in seconds. MoonPay Crypto Deposits lets users move assets in from external wallets or exchanges, with the token swapped into their balance. The four products extend MoonPay’s broader expansion into payments across blockchains such as Solana.
Card Spending Grows Faster Than the Market The integration lands as ether.fi’s spending product grows without tracking crypto prices. The company cited Paymentscan data showing its card users spent $123.7 million in September 2026 across 1.5 million transactions and 48,162 active addresses, up from $24.1 million a year earlier. Since the card’s April 2025 launch, it has processed $918.1 million across 11.6 million transactions, the release said. Ether.fi attributed the growth to everyday spending rather than trading, which it argues insulates volume from market swings.
Self-Custody at the Core Unlike a traditional neobank, ether.fi does not take custody of user funds: keys stay with the user, and the company says it cannot move or seize wallet assets. Combined with MoonPay’s licensed fiat rails, that design is the basis for the firms’ claim that they can reach more markets without bank licensing in each one. The four MoonPay products will roll out across ether.fi over the coming months, with no immediate date given for full availability.
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Ether.fi spouští dolarový stablecoin ether.fi USD na white-label platformě Ethena, která bude spravovat rezervy, emisi, odkupy i dodržování předpisů. Krytí tokenu zatím nebylo zveřejněno.
Ether.fi is launching its own US dollar stablecoin, ether.fi USD, on Ethena's white-label stablecoin service, the two companies announced on Tuesday. Ethena will manage reserves, minting, redemptions and compliance end to end, while ether.fi owns the brand and the distribution.
The token gives ether.fi a way to earn on money already sitting in its products. The protocol, which built its business on liquid restaking, holds more than $300 million in stablecoin deposits across its platform, and its Cash card has processed around $1 billion in cumulative spend across more than 100,000 active cards since launching in 2024, according to ether.fi. Ethena framed the pitch plainly: "The best stablecoin neobanks will move to own the entire stack and earn from idle deposit balances alongside their broader product suite."
Neither company has said when ether.fi USD will go live, which chains it will run on, how revenue will be split, or what will back it. The backing is the detail that matters most. Ethena's white-label product lets issuers back their token with USDe, Ethena's synthetic dollar, which holds spot crypto against short perpetual futures positions and earns from staking and funding rates. Issuers can also use USDtb, a token issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and backed by traditional reserve assets in a structure Ethena describes as GENIUS Act-compliant, or other stablecoins. A card balance backed by USDe would carry funding-rate and derivatives-venue exposure that a Treasury-backed token would not, and ether.fi users have no way yet of knowing which they will hold.
Ether.fi joins Jupiter, MegaETH and Sui on Ethena's white-label platform, which issues JupUSD, USDm and suiUSDe respectively. For Ethena, the white-label business is a way to grow distribution at a time when its flagship product has contracted. USDe has a market capitalisation of about $4.96 billion, according to CoinGecko, roughly a third of the nearly $15 billion it reached in October 2025.
Ether.fi is following a pattern set by payments apps, exchanges and DeFi protocols that have moved to issue their own dollars so they can retain reserve income they would otherwise pass to Tether or Circle. The points to watch are the backing disclosure and whether ether.fi moves existing Cash card balances into its own token by default once it launches.
Ether.fi will cut its last structural tie to EigenLayer by the end of this quarter, completing its exit from the restaking business it was built on. The protocol's documentation states that less than 1% of its assets remained restaked as of August and that its EigenPod withdrawal credentials are due to be removed by the fourth quarter of 2026.
In August, ether.fi removed restaking from weETH, its widely used DeFi collateral token, which now functions as a standard liquid staking token. Users who still want restaking exposure have to opt into a separate product built on Symbiotic, a rival restaking platform.
"There were no meaningful yield opportunities in restaking and there was some perceived risk from stakers, so we decided it made sense to exit," chief executive Mike Silagadze told CoinDesk.
The numbers behind that decision are stark. According to DefiLlama data cited by CoinDesk, the restaking category held $10.02 billion on Sept. 8 but generated only $99,977 in fees over the previous week. Liquid staking, on $51.87 billion, generated $27.35 million, meaning ordinary staking earns roughly 53 times more per dollar secured. The services renting security from EigenLayer never paid enough to fund the second layer of yield restaking promised.
The rest of the sector has fared worse. Renzo, Kelp, Swell, Puffer Finance and Bedrock, the five largest remaining liquid restaking tokens, made a combined $953,350 in gross profit in the second quarter of 2026, down from $2.18 million three quarters earlier, CoinDesk reported. Puffer, which raised $23 million, made $21,590 in the quarter.
Several developments removed what incentive remained. Points programmes that subsidised deposits wound down through 2025, and EigenLayer activated slashing in April 2025, attaching a real penalty to restaking without adding yield to compensate. In April this year, an attacker exploited Kelp's cross-chain bridge to mint about $293 million of unbacked rsETH and borrow real ether against it on Aave, exposing the extra risk carried by the token wrappers that sit on top of restaking.
Ether.fi's answer has been to rebuild itself as a crypto neobank, with a card that lets users spend against their holdings, a borrowing market and a set of vaults. Card fees rose from 17% of monthly revenue in January to 46% in July. "Neobank revenue has fully replaced the revenue lost from restaking and lower ETH price," Silagadze said, adding that ether.fi was on track to grow its revenue run rate by about 38% this year.
DefiLlama's figures are less flattering. CoinDesk found ether.fi's gross profit fell 47% from $18.71 million in the third quarter of 2025 to $9.99 million in the second quarter of 2026, and that restaking was still its second most profitable line, at $2.87 million, when it decided to leave. Ether.fi has not published the basis for its 38% figure.
EigenLayer itself has rebranded as EigenCloud and now markets verifiable computing, with restaked collateral as the layer underneath. Its holdings stand at $5.10 billion, down from $22.06 billion in August 2025.
21Shares spustila na Euronextu Paris a Euronextu Amsterdam fyzicky kryté ETP na Zcash (ZEC) a Ether.fi (ETHFI). Oba produkty mají roční poplatek 2,5 %.
Asset manager 21shares has expanded its range of cryptocurrency investment products by listing physically backed exchange-traded products (ETPs) for Zcash (ZEC) and Ether.fi (ETHFI) on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam. This development enables investors to access these digital assets via traditional brokerage accounts without holding the tokens directly.
Product details and market accessThe new ETPs offer exposure to Zcash and Ether.fi’s governance and utility token, ETHFI. Both products are physically backed, meaning each ETP share is linked to actual holdings of the underlying cryptocurrency. Investors can buy and sell these ETPs on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam, two of Europe’s largest stock exchanges.
The ETHFI ETP tracks the performance of Ether.fi, a decentralized finance protocol focused on staking and providing other financial services within the digital asset space. The addition of these products aims to provide diversified access points for institutional and retail investors seeking crypto exposure through regulated channels.
Mini dictionary: Ether.fi, launched in 2023, is a decentralized finance protocol that allows users to stake Ether (ETH) and participate in a variety of DeFi services, using its governance and utility token, ETHFI.
Both offerings are positioned as physically backed alternatives to more synthetic investment options, appealing to those prioritizing transparency in fund holdings.
Fees and competitive landscapeThe annual management fee for both the Zcash and ETHFI ETPs is set at 2.5%. This rate is significantly higher than the fees charged by many Bitcoin and Ether investment products currently available on European exchanges, which often range between 0.2% and 1.5%.
Higher fee structures may reflect the complexity and lower liquidity of these underlying assets, or the operational overhead related to physical custody of less widely traded cryptocurrencies.
ProductUnderlying AssetAnnual FeeExchange21shares Zcash ETPZcash (ZEC)2.5%Euronext Paris, Amsterdam21shares Ether.fi ETPEther.fi (ETHFI)2.5%Euronext Paris, AmsterdamBTC/Ether ETPs (avg.)Bitcoin, Ether0.2%–1.5%Various EuropeanIndustry participants are watching closely to see whether the higher fees will impact investor demand for these specialized products.
Zcash price surge and market attentionZcash’s listing comes at a time when the privacy-focused cryptocurrency has captured significant market attention after a sharp rally over the past year. ZEC’s price recently exceeded $1,500, marking a gain of nearly 1,100%, based on CoinMarketCap data.
The surge has led to renewed discussion about Zcash as a potential alternative to Bitcoin, which remains the largest and most widely adopted digital asset. Some analysts have noted Zcash’s unique privacy features and its potential to attract users seeking more anonymity in blockchain transactions.
Zach Pandl, research head at Grayscale, has stated that Zcash could gain from “second-mover advantages,” which may allow it to overcome Bitcoin’s established network effects, a challenge that other early cryptocurrencies like Litecoin were unable to address successfully.
The recent market momentum has put Zcash back into focus for both investors and industry commentators comparing its prospects to established cryptocurrencies.
Ether.fi spustila dosud největší upgrade své neúschovné „neobank“ aplikace: přidala tokenizované akcie a kovy, dedikovanou Aave V4 instanci na Optimism pro půjčky a programatické zpětné odkupy ETHFI.
Ether.fi went live this week with the biggest upgrade yet to its non-custodial “neobank” app, adding tokenized stock and metals trading, a dedicated Aave lending market for portfolio-backed borrowing, and programmatic buybacks of its ETHFI governance token, as the protocol pushes to become a full alternative to traditional banking rather than a purely DeFi-focused product.
What’s New in the “Summer” Release The centerpiece of the update is a new integration with xStocks that lets eligible users trade tokenized equities and metals alongside their crypto holdings, all held in self-custodial vaults with social recovery features rather than on a centralized exchange. Tokenized stock trading will not be available in the United States or certain other markets at launch, reflecting the regulatory patchwork still surrounding tokenized securities.
On the lending side, ether.fi deployed a dedicated Aave V4 instance on Optimism, giving users a way to borrow against their entire portfolio at rates currently around 4% and spend the proceeds directly through the ether.fi Cash card. The company says the new credit backend already carries $22 million in active borrowing, with a stated target of $500 million in lending capacity by 2027. Card users get 3% cash back on purchases, along with new fiat on- and off-ramps covering more than 30 currencies and payment methods, including Apple Pay and Cash App.
Why It Matters Ether.fi’s Cash card business already serves roughly 70,000 cardholders, giving the protocol a meaningful existing user base to migrate onto the expanded platform rather than starting a banking-style product from zero. Bundling trading, borrowing, and spending into one non-custodial app is also a bet that crypto-native infrastructure can compete directly with traditional neobanks on convenience, not just on yield.
The release adds a new revenue-linked mechanism for ETHFI holders too: the update introduces programmatic buybacks of the token, funded through protocol activity, though ether.fi hasn’t disclosed a fixed schedule or volume for the purchases. Combined with the dedicated Aave market’s borrowing activity, the update gives ETHFI a more direct link to the platform’s usage than it had before.
What This Means for the Days Ahead Whether ether.fi’s push into tokenized stocks and full-portfolio lending gains real traction will likely hinge on how quickly regulatory clarity develops in markets where the product remains restricted, the US chief among them. In the meantime, growth in the new Aave market’s borrowing volume and card adoption numbers will be the clearest signals of whether the “Summer” release is converting existing DeFi users into daily active spenders.
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ETHFI vzrostl o 18 % a protokol Ether.fi hlásí rostoucí aktivitu díky vyšším poplatkům a TVL. Zároveň ale ve 3. čtvrtletí zatím nebyl utracen žádný token na buybacky.
Ether.fi [ETHFI] has been on the higher side in the past, delivering an 18% gain, with the asset now on a 90-day streak of roughly 5.3% performance for the first time in a while.
The performance is closely linked to the on-chain market outlook, which shows there has been growing usage of the protocol, especially through fee generation and activity.
On-chain activity supports ETHFI’s growth
The clearest indication of growing usage of the protocol comes from its performance, which shows that users remain active.
The protocol’s fees have surged on a week-on-week basis to their highest level since the week starting June 1. Fees have reached $2.8 million, up from a low of $2.39 million for the week between June 22 and 28.
Higher fee generation points to growing activity on the protocol, with annualized revenue reaching over $50.56 million and revenue over the last 30 days standing at $2.93 million.
Source: DeFiLlama
The total value locked also shows steady growth, indicating that investors continue to deposit and lock their assets on the platform for long-term price performance and yield.
During the week between June 22 and 28, when fees dropped to their recent low, TVL also surged at the time of writing, rising from $2.83 billion to $3.532 billion, an increase of roughly $702 million.
On a short-term scale, the growth remains visible, with the protocol’s TVL growing by $74 million between August 11 and the time of writing.
Liquidation heatmap points to a possible pullback
The liquidation heatmap analysis shows there is potential for the price to witness a local swing based on the cluster level.
The liquidation cluster on the chart shows a dense concentration of liquidity at the higher part of the chart. This local level is around $0.45, with roughly $180,000 worth of orders at this level.
Source: CoinGlass
Clusters tend to act as magnets, pulling price toward them. In this case, with the cluster positioned above the price, it represents a sell cluster. When price trades into this zone, a pullback could occur.
For now, the setup shows a rally-to-retracement narrative. Notably, continued capital inflows, especially through on-chain flows, could strengthen accumulation, outweigh sell pressure at this level, and push ETHFI higher.
ETHFI buybacks remain at zero in Q3
One major concern over whether ETHFI can sustain its run is its buyback activity. Token buybacks allow teams to reduce the circulating supply of their tokens, which can affect price dynamics positively.
For Q3, there has been no token buyback, with $0 spent so far. This stands in sharp contrast to previous quarters, such as Q2 and Q1, when $30,000 and $3.28 million were spent, respectively.
Source: DeFiLlama
Ether.fi’s buyback program is designed to use part of protocol revenue to buy ETHFI.
For now, token holder data shows that buying activity remains in the market, with the number of token holders climbing to 131,940 on the chart. This implies that demand for the token remains present despite the lack of recent buyback spending.
With little incentive from buybacks, the analysis shows that holders in the market are more hinged on the protocol’s performance as a whole.
Final Summary
Rising fees and TVL point to growing activity on Ether.fi, while token holders have also climbed to 131,940.
ETHFI faces potential sell pressure near $0.45, with no buyback spending recorded in Q3 so far.
Ether.fi přidává v aplikaci tokenizované akcie, kovy, úvěry zajištěné portfoliem a účty ve fiat měnách. Tokenizované akcie a kovy ale nejsou dostupné uživatelům v USA.
In brief Ether.fi is adding tokenized assets and loans backed by multiple holdings. Fiat accounts will support more than 30 currencies and payment methods. Tokenized stocks and metals will not be available to U.S. users. Ether.fi, a decentralized finance platform known for Ethereum staking, is adding tokenized asset trading, portfolio-backed loans, and fiat accounts to its self-custodial app.
Announced on Thursday, Ether.fi said users can now trade tokenized stocks, metals, and crypto assets through its app. An integrated market using decentralized lending protocol Aave on Optimism, an Ethereum scaling network, also lets users lend assets, borrow against their portfolios without selling their holdings, and send or spend the proceeds. New fiat accounts support deposits and withdrawals worldwide.
Myriad: Ethereum next price move? Click the image to make your prediction.“Initially we're supporting existing assets and select tokenized stocks and gold,” Ether.fi founder and CEO Mike Silagadze told Decrypt. Those existing assets include Ethereum, Bitcoin, Hyperliqud, and ETHFI, Ether.fi's native governance token, said Silagadze. “Quickly we'll start adding additional assets as collateral.”
According to Ether.fi, fiat accounts will be available to users who have completed the identity checks required for its payment card. Deposit and withdrawal speeds will vary.
Ether.fi is also introducing automated buybacks of ETHFI and offering 3% cash back on card purchases. The company says it has more than 500,000 members and a $2 billion annual transaction run rate.
Silagadze said portfolio-backed loans and tokenized real-world assets, or RWAs, could attract people who do not already use decentralized finance.
“I think being able to borrow against the whole portfolio, and being able to loop RWAs is going to be popular,” he said. “Also getting cashback on trades and borrows is going to create some buzz, I think.”
The new features are available to new and existing Ether.fi users, although tokenized stock and metals trading is unavailable in the United States and certain other markets.
Silagadze said the expanded platform is intended to serve as an alternative to traditional banks.
“With ether.fi, we’re bridging the gap between decentralized finance and everyday financial needs,” Silagadze said. “Our goal is to replace the traditional bank for most users and give them tools and benefits that were previously available only to institutions and high-net-worth individuals. That is the power of DeFi and self-custody.”
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CEO ether.fi Mike Silagadze veřejně vypsal sázku o 1 milion USD, že návrh EIP-8363 po přijetí zvýší centralizaci mezi validátory Etherea. Proti návrhu je podle průzkumu 99,77 % validátorů.
Mike Silagadze, CEO and co-founder of liquid restaking protocol ether.fi, has put his money where his governance opinions are. On August 7, 2026, Silagadze publicly offered a $1 million bet that EIP-8363, a draft Ethereum Improvement Proposal for tapered validator reward burning, will increase network concentration among validators if adopted.
What EIP-8363 actually does EIP-8363, titled “Tapered Issuance Burn,” was submitted on August 4, 2026. Its authors include Justin Drake, a prominent researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. The core mechanic is straightforward in concept: partially burn validator rewards at a rate that scales with the total amount of ETH staked across the network.
The burn formula scales as the effective staking balance divided by 60.25 million ETH, raised to the power of 1.5, and capped at 100%. In practical terms, as the amount of staked ETH approaches roughly 50% of the total supply (around 60.25 million ETH), performing validators would reach net zero issuance. Their rewards would be entirely burned.
Currently, about 41.5 million ETH is staked, representing roughly 34% of the total supply, with yields hovering around 2.67%. The proposal’s most aggressive effects would only kick in as staking climbs toward that 60.25 million ETH threshold.
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Why Silagadze thinks it’s a centralization bomb Silagadze’s argument centers on a simple economic asymmetry. Solo stakers and smaller node operators have real capital costs. They buy ETH at market price, lock it up, and earn yield as compensation for that opportunity cost. When yields get compressed by a tapered burn, their incentive to participate erodes quickly.
Large custodians like Coinbase and Binance operate under entirely different economics. They hold massive pools of customer ETH that they can deploy for staking at effectively zero marginal cost of capital. Even with dramatically lower yields, staking remains profitable for them because their cost basis is fundamentally different. The result, in Silagadze’s view, is predictable: solo stakers exit, large custodians stay, and the validator set consolidates around a handful of centralized entities.
Stani Kulechov, CEO of Aave, has also raised concerns about EIP-8363’s downstream effects. Kulechov’s critique focuses on DeFi collateral markets that depend on staking yields. Liquid staking tokens like stETH and eETH serve as collateral across lending protocols. Compress the yield those tokens generate, and you potentially undermine the economic foundation of a significant portion of DeFi.
The community response has been unusually decisive Polling conducted by the Ethereum Validators Association tells a stark story. A survey of validators found 99.77% of respondents opposing EIP-8363.
The proposal remains in draft form with no immediate plans for inclusion in any upcoming hard fork. Supporters of the proposal argue that unchecked staking growth creates its own centralization risks and security vulnerabilities, and that if too much ETH is locked in staking, it could reduce the liquidity available for economic activity on the network. The tapered burn, in this framing, acts as a pressure valve.
What’s at stake beyond the bet Ethereum’s staking ratio has been climbing steadily. At 34% of supply staked, the network is still well below the 50% threshold where EIP-8363’s burn mechanism would reach full force.
For DeFi protocols, liquid staking derivatives are deeply integrated into lending, borrowing, and leverage markets. Any material change to staking economics ripples through the entire composability stack. A protocol like Aave, which holds significant positions in staked ETH derivatives as collateral, has direct financial exposure to these policy decisions.
The $1 million bet remains open. Whether anyone takes the other side may say as much about the proposal’s prospects as the formal governance process itself.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ether.fi Ventures investuje do Blockspace, firmy zaměřené na profesionalizaci infrastruktury Etherea mimo samotný protokol. Blockspace bude zpeněžovat pouze v ETH a omezí svůj podíl na 15 %.
Ether.fi Ventures just wrote a check for Blockspace, a new commercial entity built to improve and monetize the Ethereum infrastructure that exists outside the core protocol.
Blockspace isn’t trying to reinvent the protocol. It’s targeting the layer of infrastructure that already handles over 90% of Ethereum’s blockspace flow, the relays, builders, searchers, and order flow mechanics that most users never see but depend on for every transaction they send.
What Blockspace actually does Blockspace is positioning itself as a dedicated team focused exclusively on professionalizing this layer, with two notable constraints baked in from day one.
First, it will monetize exclusively in ETH. Not stablecoins, not governance tokens, not equity. ETH.
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Second, Blockspace has imposed a self-cap on its own stake at 15%. That’s a deliberate ceiling designed to prevent the kind of centralization creep that keeps Ethereum researchers up at night.
The team is led by Drew Van der Werff, who has been building connections with other influential Ethereum infrastructure teams including Gattaca and Ultrasound Money. The thesis tying all of this together is refreshingly simple: a commercially successful Ethereum ecosystem benefits everyone who participates in it.
Ether.fi’s expanding infrastructure empire Back in April 2026, ether.fi committed $3 billion in ETH to ETHGas, a platform for blockspace forward markets. That deal let validators and blockspace consumers hedge future block inclusion costs, essentially creating a futures market for Ethereum transactions.
The Blockspace investment extends that same logic. If ETHGas was about creating financial instruments for blockspace, Blockspace itself is about making the underlying infrastructure robust enough to support those instruments at scale.
Ether.fi’s core business, liquid restaking, gives it a natural interest in every layer of Ethereum’s value chain. The protocol has grown to multi-billion dollar TVL levels and raised a $23 million Series A back in 2024.
The commercialization of Ethereum’s plumbing Over 90% of Ethereum’s blockspace currently flows through out-of-protocol infrastructure. That means the vast majority of Ethereum’s block production depends on systems that aren’t part of the protocol’s consensus rules. Until now, there hasn’t been a single commercial entity whose entire job is to make that surface area work better.
What this means for investors For ETH holders, the ETH-only monetization model is a quiet but meaningful detail. Every dollar of revenue Blockspace generates creates organic demand for ETH.
The 15% stake cap is worth watching closely. If Blockspace sticks to it as it scales, it could establish a new norm for infrastructure providers in the ecosystem.
The risk, of course, is concentration. When a small number of well-funded entities control the infrastructure that routes 90% of blockspace, the network’s censorship resistance and neutrality guarantees start depending on voluntary commitments like stake caps rather than structural decentralization.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
