Omni Network has secured a deal worth $600 million Ether (ETH) from restaking protocol Ether.Fi, which will be used to enhance the security of the Omni Network and EigenLayer.
The $600 million will help secure both the Omni testnet and mainnet, according to a Mar. 4 X (formerly Twitter) post by Omni Network.
“Omni is proud to announce a commitment of $600M of staked ETH from @ether_fi to secure the Omni Network. This first-of-its-kind deal positions us at the forefront of the growing restaking ecosystem.”
Omni Network is a layer-1 interoperability blockchain that securely connects Ethereum rollups via restaking, aiming 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) of $1.88 billion. Ether.Fi is currently the world’s largest liquid restaking protocol, after its TVL rose over 163% during the past month, according to DefiLlama data.
The $600 million worth of Ether will be restaked on EigenLayer, currently the largest Ethereum restaking protocol with over $10.3 billion in TVL.
The new strategic partnership comes nearly two weeks after venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced a $100-million funding round for EigenLayer. The protocol also completed a $50-million funding round in March, led by Blockchain Capital.
Related: EigenLayer partners with Ritual to build AI-enabled DApps
Founded in 2021, EigenLayer enables validators and stakers to restake liquid-staking derivative tokens like Lido Staked Ether and RocketPool’s rETH to secure and validate other networks. These assets can also be deployed in other decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to earn additional yield.
Liquid staking is currently the largest protocol category on DefiLlama with a combined TVL of $54.7 billion, while restaking protocols are in sixth place, worth a total of $10.305 billion. EigenLayer’s TVL alone accounts for 99.96% of the total TVL of $10.305 billion locked in restaking protocols.
Investor interest in restaking protocols like EigenLayer started surging on Feb. 5 after the protocol temporarily removed its staking cap, aiming to incentivize organic growth. During this restaking window, EigenLayer’s TVL rose over 181% to $6.05 billion on Feb. 10 from just $2.15 billion on Feb. 5. While a new staking cap was applied, the project plans to permanently remove this limit in the future.
Related: Crypto’s next leap: Ether ETFs through Keyrock’s kaleidoscope
