A year ago, Resting was one of the most popular areas of Crypto, and projects as a self -layer were announced as the next big thing.
Fast forward to mid -2025 and the total value locked (TVL) has fallen over the sector and the hype where surrounded Point Farms has removed.
Because of all this, Ether.fi, the market leader, has remained steadily and users helps to generate yields through liquid reinforcement sticks (LSTs) that can be deployed on the decentralized financial ecosystem (Defi).
Now Ether.fi wants to expand with plans to become a neobank for crypto companies and users.
Ether.fi’s dominance
Ether.fi, which is located in the Cayman Islands, benefited from one of the first movers in the liquid repair space and start a lucrative point farm with which early users received points that could eventually be transferred to a Token AirDrop.
In a period of 10 weeks at the beginning of 2024, the ETH grew from 45,000 ETH to 808,000 ETH. Now there is 2.58 million ETH used on Ether.fi, while the next competitor, Renzo, has around 380,000 ETH.
In dollar, Ether.fi has around $ 5 billion in TVL. This number was taught in December from the peak of $ 9.4 billion, but only because of the decreasing ETH price, in contrast to important outflows.
Ether.fi keeps closely with his users in an attempt to keep them on board.
“We probably know half of the TV,” Silagadze added. “Like in, we know who they are and we talk to them and have constant conversations.”
Renzo, on the other hand, has seen more than 60% ETH who have pulled the platform out of the platform since last July, with TVL sliding from 1 million ETH to 378,000 ETH according to Defillama.
From the Reflike Protocol to Neobank
For Silvagadze, the repairing product is a means to get users and capital on board, while the company’s most important ambition is to become a Neobank to compete with Revolut.
“Turning it off was actually just a way to build TVL and get a user base,” Silagadze told Coindesk. “The ultimate goal is to create an integrated product suite with which users can be fully removed from their traditional banking settings and operate on a crypto -native platform.”
Ether.fi rolled out a “cash” visa card on the Scroll network in September and Silagadze believes that this will be the most important income of the company.
Neobank has recently become the fashion word in Crypto. Lending Platform Nexo has a new things like Neobank last year and there was also the Stealth launch of Dakota, a crypto app that will offer bank services to crypto deposators. EOS, which was launched in 2017 as a much healed smart contract platform, has also shifted the focus to Web3 Banking.
For Ether.fi, the plan is to include three products in one short -released mobile app.
The app includes three integrated products: Ether.fi Stake, the expansion protocol; Ether.fi Liquid, an automated Defi strategy manager that generates the best available yield through the use of AI; and the Ether.fi Cash wallet and credit card.
The preparation of companies that want to serve the American market are deterred by an absence of a clear regulatory framework.
But Ether.fi hopes that the crypto-friendly Trump administration will smooth out the way to offer services to American citizens after it has established respective licenses.
“We are actually going to switch on the US for our strike product and the money product relatively fast. We have actually just received a legal opinion that we are cool to do that,” Silvagadze said. Ether.fi also applies licenses to operate in the European Union and the Cayman Islands, where her team is active.
The sentiment problem of Ethereum
Ethereum was the favorite of the Bull Market 2017 and the subsequent ICO tree and was the dominant smart contract chain because Defi and NFTs anim 2020-22.
However, this cycle is the Ethereum network criticized for a long-term route map while the market focuses on memecoins and faster block chains such as Solana.
Ether is currently being traded at around $ 1,965 and has lost 40% of its value in the last 12 months. Solana is now traded at $ 131 and has only lost 25% of its value in the same period.
“Some of them [negative sentiment] is clearly designed by competing ecosystems. The Solana people are talking every day with investors and allocators and media and just spread bulls ** t over ether, “Silagadze said.
“If you actually dissect those arguments, they are incoherent. But those memes are floating around, and that has an effect.”
