What is Ether.fi (ETHFI)?

Ether.fi began as liquid restaking: deposit ETH, receive eETH, and the protocol stakes it on Ethereum and restakes it through EigenLayer automatically, so you earn staking rewards plus restaking rewards while holding a token that remains usable in DeFi. Its distinguishing technical choice is that stakers keep control of their withdrawal keys, which most liquid staking protocols do not allow.

That business is large — over $5.5bn in TVL — and it is not the interesting part any more.

The Cash Card

Ether.fi issues a non-custodial Visa card that spends against staked ETH. Your eETH keeps earning roughly 3% right up to the moment a payment settles, cashback runs to 3% up to a monthly cap and then steps down to 1% and 0.5%, and there are membership tiers determining where you sit.

Non-custodial is the word doing the work. Exchange cards require handing over your assets; this one spends from a wallet you control, which is a materially different product from the same-looking cards Coinbase and Crypto.com issue.

The scale is the genuinely notable thing. Around 70,000 active cards and 300,000 accounts are migrating from Scroll to OP Mainnet — a number of real consumers actually transacting that almost no DeFi protocol reaches, and one that puts Ether.fi closer to a fintech than to a yield protocol.

Why the card matters more than the yield

Liquid restaking is a commodity — Renzo, Puffer, Kelp and others offer the same thing, and yields converge because they are drawn from the same source. A card business with 70,000 users, an issuer relationship and a spending habit is something competitors cannot replicate by deploying a contract.

• Governance over the protocol, the operator set and the fee structure.
• Membership tiers affecting the Cash Card's cashback rate and benefits.
• Staking ETHFI for a share of protocol revenue and for tier qualification.
• Incentive and loyalty programmes across the product line.

ETHFI is more useful than most governance tokens because it is tied to the card's tiering — holding it changes the product you receive rather than only the votes you cast. That is a small, real, recurring reason to own it, which is more than most DeFi tokens can claim.

ETHFI launched in March 2024 with allocations to an airdrop, the ecosystem, investors and the team on multi-year vesting. Unlock flow has been a factor in the price in the usual pattern.

Revenue comes from a fee on staking and restaking rewards plus the card's interchange and spread. The second line is the strategically important one: interchange is a recurring, non-crypto-cyclical revenue stream that arrives whether or not anyone wants leveraged yield.

The diversification argument

Most DeFi protocols' revenue collapses together in a downturn because it all derives from the same appetite for risk. People keep buying groceries. A protocol whose income partly comes from card spending is structurally less cyclical than one whose income is entirely staking fees, and this is the clearest case in DeFi of that diversification being real rather than claimed.

Three distinct things share the word here and they should not be confused.

Staking ETH with Ether.fi means receiving eETH, which earns Ethereum staking rewards plus EigenLayer restaking rewards, and stays usable in DeFi. Since April 2026 those restaking rewards come with enforceable slashing, which they did not before — the yield and the risk both changed that month.

Staking ETHFI means locking the governance token for a share of protocol revenue and for membership tier qualification. Different asset, different purpose.

And eETH carries the standard liquid staking risks: it can trade below ETH in a stressed market, the exit runs through Ethereum's withdrawal queue, and there is smart contract exposure on top of the underlying validators.

Restaking risk became real in April 2026

EigenLayer activated production slashing on 17 April 2026, so restaking penalties are now enforceable where previously they were not. eETH's yield includes restaking rewards, which means eETH holders now bear slashing exposure across whichever AVSs the operators support — chosen by the operators, not by them.

Liquid restaking is commoditised

Renzo, Puffer, Kelp and others offer functionally the same product drawing yield from the same source, so rates converge and switching costs are low. Ether.fi's defence is the card and the brand rather than the restaking itself.

A card is a regulated business

Issuing a Visa card means issuer relationships, compliance obligations and jurisdictional restrictions that a smart contract does not have. Ether.fi has taken on operational and regulatory exposure that most DeFi protocols deliberately avoid, and it moved the product's chain once already.

The eETH peg

eETH is redeemable through Ethereum's withdrawal queue, which anchors it, and the market price can fall below ETH in a fast unwind — as stETH did in 2022. Leveraged eETH positions are exposed to a discount that appears exactly when it hurts.

Cashback is a marketing budget

Three per cent to a monthly cap, then 1% and 0.5%, funded by interchange and by the protocol's willingness to buy adoption. Rates of that kind are set by a company and can be reduced, and spending behaviour built on them adjusts when they are.