Omni Network has secured a significant deal valued at $600 million in Ether (ETH) from restaking protocol Ether.Fi. The funds will be utilized to enhance the security of both the Omni Network and EigenLayer. According to a post on March 4 by Omni Network, the $600 million will play a crucial role in securing both the Omni testnet and mainnet. Omni Network is a layer-1 interoperability blockchain that connects Ethereum rollups securely through restaking. Its goal is to offer lower latency and improve ecosystem fragmentation.
The $600 million worth of Ether represents nearly 33% of Ether.Fi’s total value locked (TVL), which stands at $1.88 billion. DefiLlama data shows that Ether.Fi has become the world’s largest liquid restaking protocol after experiencing a 163% rise in TVL over the past month.
The $600 million worth of Ether will be restaked on EigenLayer, currently the largest Ethereum restaking protocol with a TVL of over $10.3 billion. This strategic partnership comes shortly after venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced a $100 million funding round for EigenLayer. The protocol had also completed a $50 million funding round in March, led by Blockchain Capital.
EigenLayer, established in 2021, allows validators and stakers to restake liquid-staking derivative tokens such as Lido Staked Ether and RocketPool’s rETH to secure and validate other networks. These assets can also be deployed in other decentralized finance protocols to earn additional yield.
Liquid staking is currently the most substantial protocol category on DefiLlama, with a combined TVL of $54.7 billion, while restaking protocols rank sixth with a value of $10.305 billion. EigenLayer’s TVL alone accounts for 99.96% of the total TVL locked in restaking protocols.
Investor interest in EigenLayer began to surge on February 5 after the protocol temporarily removed its staking cap to encourage organic growth. During this restaking window, EigenLayer’s TVL increased by 181% to $6.05 billion on February 10 from just $2.15 billion on February 5. Although a new staking cap was implemented, the project plans to permanently remove this limit in the future.
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