Asking what is Ether.fi comes down to a non-custodial Ethereum staking and DeFi platform whose governance token is ETHFI. The platform began as a liquid staking service for Ethereum and now combines staking, automated yield vaults and a crypto-funded card in one app. At a price of $0.6263, ETHFI has a market cap of $625.41M (rank #126) and a 24h volume of $19.55M. The token trades 92.66% below its all-time high of $8.53.
Core technology and product architecture
Ether.fi is a set of products, each with its own contracts, permissions and risks, rather than a single contract. Stake pools ETH, runs validators through node operators and issues eETH, a rebasing token whose balance rises with staking rewards. weETH is its non-rebasing wrapped version, whose conversion rate to eETH increases over time.
In August 2026, Ether.fi removed restaking from weETH, leaving it as a plain staking token. Restaking exposure moved to a second token, weETHs (CoinDesk).
Liquid is a family of non-custodial vaults that allocate deposits across DeFi strategies and auto-compound returns. Cash is a card and payments product that lets users spend against on-platform crypto balances and borrow USDC against eligible collateral.
Primary use cases and real-world applications
- ETH staking: Users stake ETH and receive weETH, which the protocol says can be used across more than 400 DeFi protocols.
- Automated yield: Liquid vaults deposit assets across protocols and auto-compound the returns.
- Spending: Rain, the card program partner, reported that Cash passed $1 million in transaction volume within a few weeks of launch (Rain).
Who is behind Ether.fi and where is it based?
Ether.fi is not anonymous. CEO and co-founder Mike Silagadze is publicly identified and previously founded Top Hat, an education software company. Tracxn and neobank.wiki also name Rok Kopp as a co-founder. Silagadze said the venture began in December 2022 and secured seed funding by February 2023 (Cayman Enterprise City).
The company is based in George Town, Cayman Islands. Its legal entity is Ether.Fi SEZC, which the terms of use describe as "a Special Economic Zone Company, organized under the laws of Cayman Islands" (Terms of Use). Crunchbase lists the former legal name as Gadze Finance SEZC (Crunchbase). The sources reviewed do not identify a separate foundation entity.
In February 2024, Ether.fi announced a $23M Series A led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund (CoinDesk). Total funding figures differ by tracker and are not reconciled here.
Tokenomics
- Total supply: 1,000,000,000 ETHFI. The launch announcement states the token "has been fully minted with a fixed supply of 1 billion. There will be no further issuance" (Medium).
- Circulating supply: 998,535,999 ETHFI.
- Allocation: Per the official table updated August 2, 2025, investors hold 33.74%, the DAO treasury 21.63%, core contributors 21.47% (vested over three years), user airdrops 17.57%, and partnerships 5.6% (ETHFI Governance).
- Vesting: Investor and core contributor allocations, which together make up 55.1% of supply, unlock over months 13 to 36 after the token generation event. Vesting concludes on February 18, 2027 (Token Transparency Framework).
- Inflation and deflation: Supply is fixed, and no burn mechanism appears in the sources. Value accrual runs through buybacks. Stakers of ETHFI receive sETHFI, which earns buyback-distributed tokens and counts toward governance.
Buybacks have expanded in stages. An October 2025 proposal authorized up to $50 million from the treasury while the price is below $3 (governance). Programmatic buybacks began on August 13, 2026, funded from every product and revenue line (TradingView).
Consensus mechanism and network security model
Ether.fi runs no consensus mechanism of its own. Its validators secure Ethereum, which uses proof-of-stake. Rewards are split at the protocol level, and a Findas summary of the whitepaper sets the split at 90% to stakers, 5% to node operators and 5% to the protocol (Findas).
Security measures reported in the sources include:
- Audits: Certora reviewed the EigenLayer slashing feature and reported no security issues on April 12, 2025 (Certora). The protocol says its contracts are audited by Nethermind, Zellic and Certora.
- Slashing cover: On July 17, 2026, Ether.fi selected Nexus Mutual to provide up to 15,000 ETH of slashing cover for its validators (Chainwire).
- Credit rating: Credora rated weETH A+, the highest tier on its scale, with an annualized probability of default of 0.098% in a report dated June 16, 2026 (Credora).
- Incident: DefiLlama lists a September 11, 2026 hack of ether.fi Liquid, with $43,260 lost, classified as an access control issue.
Key partnerships and ecosystem integrations
- EigenLayer: Ether.fi is winding down its restaking. Restaked assets now account for less than 1% of the total, and the company plans to remove EigenPod withdrawal credentials by year-end 2026.
- Optimism: Cash migrated from Scroll to OP Mainnet, completed on April 16, 2026. The company reported 70,000+ active cards, 300,000+ accounts and $200M+ in TVL (ether.fi Blog).
- Aave: A July 2026 governance proposal would deploy a dedicated Aave V4 instance on OP Mainnet, managed by Ether.fi, to power Cash. This is a proposal, not a confirmed deployment (Aave governance).
- FalconX: Since September 2025, FalconX has supported eETH across OTC trading, credit and derivatives collateral, and custody.
- MoonPay: An October 2026 partnership moves Ether.fi's fiat on-ramp and off-ramp infrastructure onto MoonPay's stack (PR Newswire).
Competitive advantages and unique value proposition
Ether.fi's blog says it is the largest liquid restaking protocol and secures more than three-quarters of the market. This is a company claim. The protocol's main differentiators are:
- Non-custodial design: Privileged keys do not control user funds, and claiming a finalized withdrawal is permissionless and cannot be paused.
- Single account: Staking, vaults and card spending sit in one account.
- Cash as the main revenue driver: According to Delphi Digital, as cited in a 21Shares factsheet, card, borrowing and swap revenue grew from 44% of protocol revenue in Q4 2025 to over 60% by September 2026, while staking fell below one-third.
Current development activity and roadmap highlights
- Summer release (August 13, 2026): Added tokenized stock and metal trading, fiat accounts across more than 30 currencies, and Aave-backed borrowing near 4% (Ether.fi Summer).
- Tooling (October 15, 2026): Users can download account statements, and a read-only MCP server lets AI assistants connect to the platform.
- Roadmap: The Optimism announcement said a gold vault and a euro card were next.
- Buybacks: A September 2026 buyback vote required 1 million ETHFI for quorum. The outcome is not confirmed in the sources reviewed.