Ether.fi begins up to $210M airdrop, token falls 25%

The token fell more than 25% after launching Monday morning

article-image

Ether.fi and Adobe Stock modified by Blockworks

share

Ether.fi, the best-capitalized liquid restaking project, began distributing 60 million of its native ETHFI token Monday morning, worth roughly $210 million at press time.

It’s the first domino to fall following weeks of traders and even DeFi hedge funds rushing to accumulate restaking points, which speculators hope will lead to airdrops in the restaking sector. ETHFI fell more than 25% following the launch as points farmers took profits on the tokens. It was trading for around $3.50 midday Monday, according to CoinGecko. 

Roughly 22 million of the 60 million ETHFI tokens made available were claimed Monday morning, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard. The airdrop, and the ether.fi protocol in general, is not available to US residents. 

Points have lately become a popular user acquisition method in crypto. When users do things like move assets around on a DeFi protocol, that protocol will dole out points which are — sometimes explicitly and other times with a wink — understood to determine allocations in a future token airdrop.

Read more: Stack ‘points chain’ layer-3 aims to bring loyalty points to Base

Speculators have created a cottage industry for collecting points in the restaking sector in particular. Users are trading points for the restaking giant EigenLayer on Whales Market and leveraging up their points exposure with so-called yield tokens on DeFi app Pendle. Some asset managers in the DeFi space have begun accumulating tokens on behalf of investors.

Partly as a result of points farming, assets held on restaking protocols have skyrocketed across the board in recent weeks. EigenLayer has taken on more than $9 billion in total value locked (TVL) in the past month and a half, according to DeFiLlama. During the same time frame, ether.fi’s TVL more than quadrupled to a little under $3 billion — more than DeFi mainstays like Compound and Curve. 

ETHFI is a governance token that lets holders vote on things like how value accrual on the token should work and ether.fi’s grants program, ether.fi said in a blog post. 11% of the token’s supply will be distributed via airdrop, with roughly 23% set aside for core contributors, 27% for the project’s treasury and 32.5% for investors. 

It’s the latest attempt at turning hype into something tangible from a protocol in the restaking sector as EigenLayer — the protocol Ethereum restaking protocols are built on — is yet to go to mainnet. Last week, LRT project Swell said it would be launching a so-called restaked rollup, or a layer-2 built as an actively validated service (AVS) on EigenLayer. 

Read more: Swell launches its own layer-2 for restaking with Polygon CDK

Ether.fi has talked about building a layer-2 in the future. But for now, the project’s leadership is mostly focused on scaling its new investing product, called Liquid, and growing the LRT project’s TVL, founder and CEO Mike Silagadze told Blockworks. 

“Honestly I’m just glad it’s done with, [so] we can mostly focus on getting back to work,” Silagadze said of the airdrop process in a text. 


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

An overview of the Base Ecosystem, with a focus on market leaders.

article-image

Although bitcoin hitting $120k by year’s end is looking unlikely

article-image

About 270 million HYPE has been claimed, valued around $7.6 billion

article-image

Stanford professors David Mazières and Dan Boneh will lead the lab alongside a cohort of graduate student researchers

article-image

With more companies holding BTC, bitcoin yielding strategies could become “a new corporate finance norm,” CoinShares posed

article-image

The proposal comes after Polygon governance considered a controversial use of bridged liquidity for yield

article-image

Can the community balance its decentralized ethos with the need for inclusivity and constructive debate?