EigenLayer TVL dominance and the Pectra staking shift

EigenLayer holds $15.258 billion in total value locked and covers 4,364,467 ETH. This dominance exceeds the market share held by Lido. I see the movement toward restaking as a drive for capital efficiency. Base ETH staking earns 3-4% APY, but liquid restaking protocols like ether.fi, Renzo, and Kelp provide 8-15% APY. Users deposit ETH or liquid staking tokens to receive tokens like weETH, ezETH, or rsETH. These tokens allow users to access rewards from Actively Validated Services. These services include data availability layers, oracle networks, and bridges. EigenLayer integrates three core components through EigenCloud: EigenDA, EigenCompute, and EigenVerify. The total EIGEN supply is 1,793,689,817 tokens, and 451,570,867 tokens are in circulation. Early contributors received 25.50% of the allocation, while investors obtained 29.50%. The protocol proposed ELIP-12 to implement a 20% fee on subsidized AVS rewards. These fees go toward EIGEN buybacks to create deflationary pressure. Shared security increases the cost of corruption. If an attacker targets a non-pooled AVS with 1 billion in assets, they only need 1 billion to attack it. With pooled security, an attacker must possess 13 billion to breach 13 separate AVS modules that share security. This increases the security of the entire network. The protocol also manages reward distribution through its various components.

Validator efficiency and the Pectra upgrade

The Pectra upgrade arrived in May 2025. It changed validator operations through several Ethereum Improvement Proposals. EIP-7251 increases the maximum effective balance to 2,048 ETH. This allows validators to consolidate their positions and reduce hardware requirements. EIP-6110 reduces validator deposit times from hours to 13 minutes.

EIP-7002 enables withdrawals from the execution layer. This change gives validators more control over their principal without needing operator-signed exit messages. EIP-7691 increases the number of blobs per block from 3 to 6. EIP-7702 allows accounts to act like smart contracts through transaction batching, gas sponsorship, and social recovery. You should know that these changes make staking more efficient for large-scale users.

Layered risks and protocol scrutiny

I find the layering of risk in restaking to be the biggest flaw in the current ecosystem. An LRT holder depends on the LRT contract, the EigenLayer contract, and every AVS contract the protocol supports. In April 2026, an attacker exploited a LayerZero bridge vulnerability to drain $280-293 million from Kelp DAO. This event affected 116,500 rsETH tokens, a figure that is roughly 18% of the supply. I think the slashing risk is the primary danger for anyone using EigenLayer. Slashing is an AVS-defined penalty that hits the operator stake. EigenLayer uses Unique Stake Allocation to limit how much stake is tied to a specific Operator Set. However, an operator that supports many AVSs faces higher correlated risk. Renzo’s CTO, James Poole, says sections of Renzo’s code were copy-pasted into Kelp DAO. He claims Renzo’s code is protected by a Business Source License. When an operator accepts a service’s rules and then fails to meet them, the AVS penalizes the allocated stake, which creates a real risk for any restaker who delegates assets to that specific operator. Renzo and Kelp DAO also face scrutiny over code similarity. The Halborn audit of Renzo code suggests Renzo did not backdate its additions. Renzo’s ezETH is for users wanting exposure without managing AVS decisions. Kelp’s rsETH is bridged to Layer 2 networks. Does the use of similar code in testing environments satisfy the requirements of open-source development?