A year ago, restaging was one of the hottest areas of crypto, and projects such as Eigenlayer were reported as the next big thing.

Frop until mid -2025 and the total value locked (tvl) has fallen over the sector and the hype that surrounded the point farms have wilted away.

Throughout it, Ether.Fi, the market leader, has remained stable, and helps users generate yield through Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTS), which can be stacked over the decentralized funding (defi) ecosystem.

Now Ether.Fi is looking to expand with plans to become a neobank for cryptic businesses and users.

Ether.fi’s dominance

Ether.fi, based on the Cayman Islands, benefit from being one of the first movements in the floating residue space where he starts a lucrative point that saw the early users receive points that could eventually be transferred to a token air.

For a period of 10 weeks at the beginning of 2024, Staked ETH grew from 45,000 ETH to 808,000 ETH. Now there are 2.58 million stacked ETH at ether.fi, while the next competitor, Renzo, has about 380,000 ETH.

In dollar terms, ether.Fi has about $ 5 billion tvl. This number has fallen from December’s high of $ 9.4 billion, but only because of the dwindling price of ETH, as opposed to any significant outflow.

Ether.fi engages closely with its users in an attempt to keep them on board.

“We probably know half of Tvl,” Silagadze added. “As you know, who they are and we talk to them and have continuous conversations.”

In contrast, Renzo has seen more than 60% ETH withdrawn from the platform since last July, with Tvl, which slipped from 1 million ETH to 378,000 ETH, according to Defillama.

From Resting Protocol to Neobank

For Silvagadze, the dormant product is a means of on board users and capital, while the company’s most important ambition is to become a neobank to compete as revolutened.

“The stake for us was really just a way of building Tvl and getting a user base,” Silagadze told Coindesk. “The ultimate goal is to create an integrated product package that allows users to fully ramp from their traditional banking institutions and operate on a Crypto -Inborn platform.”

Ether.Fi rolled a “cash” Visa card on the Scroll network in September, and Silagadze believes this will be the company’s most important revenue driver.

Neobank has become quite buzzword in Crypto too late. Lending platform Nexo redirected last year as a neobank, and there was also the stealth launch of Dakota, a crypto app that will provide bank services to crypto slides. EOS, which was launched as a very fully smart contract platform in 2017, has also moved Focus to Web3 Banking.

For ether.Fi, the plan is to incorporate three products into a soon -to -be -released mobile app.

The app will include three integrated products: ether.Fi -stick, which is the insert protocol; Ether.Fi -fluid, which is an automated defi strategy administrator that generates the best available yield using AI; and ether.fi cash wallet and credit card.

Poor companies who want to serve the US market have been subjected to an absence of a clear regulatory framework.

But ether.Fi hopes that the crypto-friendly Trump administration will smooth the way for it to offer services to US citizens after ensuring respective licenses.

“We’re actually going to turn on the US for our stack product and the cash product relatively soon. We’ve actually just got a legal statement that we’re cool to do so,” Silvagadze said. Ether.Fi also applies for licenses to operate in the European Union and Cayman Islands, where its team operates.

Ethereum’s mood problem

Ethereum was the beloved of Bull Market 2017 and subsequently ICO Boom and was the dominant smart contract chain as Defi and NFT’s animated boom 2020-22.

However, the Ethereum network has been criticized for a extracted roadmap as the market centers on memcoins and faster blockchains like Solana.

Ether is currently trading to about $ 1,965, after losing 40% of its value over the past 12 months. Solana, meanwhile, acts to $ 131 after losing only 25% of its value in the same period.

“Some of that [negative sentiment] is clearly constructed by competing ecosystems. The Solana people are out there every single day talking to investors and allocation and media and just spreading bulls ** about ether, “Silagadze said.

“If you are actually dissecting these arguments, they are incoherent. But these memes flow around and it has an effect.”