Crypto
Home›Crypto›Market Structure›ether.fi adds tokenized stocks, fiat rails and Aave-ba…
ether.fi adds tokenized stocks, fiat rails and Aave-backed borrowing
The protocol is moving beyond pure staking with $3.34 billion in ether.fi staking, plus an Optimism Aave borrowing pool at $160.2 million with 11.8% growth over 30 days.
ether.fi said it is extending its liquid staking and “defibank” concept with new retail banking style features, including tokenized stock trading, portfolio-wide borrowing, and global fiat transfers, as part of its Summer release. The update follows ether.fi removing restaking from weETH last week, leaving less than 1% of its assets restaked with EigenLayer. Staking remains the core of its balance sheet, with its staking arm holding $3.34 billion, according to DefiLlama data.
Ether.fi also highlighted its Optimism borrowing activity, pointing to an integrated Aave market that lets users borrow against their entire portfolio for use with its Cash card or to buy other assets. It said the borrowing rates are currently around 4%, with USDC on Aave v3 on Optimism showing a borrow rate of 3.82%, according to Aavescan data.
Beyond the app changes, ether.fi said a dedicated Aave instance for the platform is still going through governance. An ARFC filed on July 14 set next steps that require an AIP vote, with terms giving Aave’s DAO 20% of instance revenue, which ether.fi projected at $1 million to $1.2 million per year, and up to $175 million in assets at launch and a $500 million target by year-end. The release notes that ether.fi Cash currently runs on a custom, non-pooled borrow market on OP Mainnet with about $25 million in active borrows across more than 16 collateral assets, but it did not specify which market will power the app going forward.