EigenLayer Airdrop Strategy: Liquid Restaking with eETH by ether.fi

Before we get started, this is not a recommendation or endorsement to buy any token(s) mentioned.

With the recent caps raise on EigenLayer, there has been a mania of deposits competing to get into EigenLayer for the chance of earning a future airdrop.

During this race to deposit into EigenLayer, I've been surprised how quickly ETH LST holders gave up their liquidity to EigenLayer.

The purpose of any LST was to earn passive staking income while maintaining liquidity to be used in DeFi such as liquidity provisions or overcollateralized vaults. This shortsightedness has presented an opportunity for better product design in an emerging sector called liquid restaking.

Liquid restaking is designed to offer liquidity to illiquid assets (ie stETH, ETHx) deposited into restaking platforms, such as EigenLayer. There are liquid restaking tokens such as rsETH by Kelp DAO which allow users to deposit existing stETH or ETHx and maintain a transferrable utility token while earning additional rewards in EigenLayer.

One team that took a vastly different approach to liquid staking and liquid restaking is ether.fi. eETH by ether.fi is everything you want in one token--to earn passive ETH yield combined with liquid restaking in EigenLayer while maintaining the liquidity to use your tokens in DeFi, plus additional ether.fi Loyalty Points. eETH eliminates the steps required to mint an LST such as rETH and then deposit it later into EigenLayer.

The team at ether.fi cleverly thought ahead about the need to