Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform EigenLayer has seen a 207% surge in total value locked (TVL) after it raised its liquid restaking cap to 100,000 ether (ETH).

The restaking protocol, which went live in June, hit the 100,000 cap in a matter of hours as TVL rose from $78 million to $238 million, according to DefiLlama. TVL refers to the number of tokens locked on any crypto platform.

EigenLayer gradually increases its liquid staking token cap before initiating a global pause in order to "enable a more extensive network of users to actively participate in restaking endeavors," as per technical documents.

The protocol allows those staking ETH to restake those assets by depositing liquid staking tokens (LSTs) including lido stETH (stETH), rocket pool ETH (rETH) and coinbase-wrapped staked ETH (cbETH).

Restaking is a method of obtaining additional rewards on ETH that are staked on the main Ethereum blockchain. Users are required to stake 32 ETH to become network validators – or entities that supply computing resources to a blockchain for processing transactions.

All future LST cap increases will be determined by a governance process that needs to be approved by EigenLayer's multisignatory governance system.

EigenLabs, the developer of EigenLayer, raised a total of $64.5 million earlier this year including $50 million in a Series A round led by Blockchain Capital.

Ether Staking DeFi On-chain Data

Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight joined CoinDesk as a news reporter in April 2022. Before joining CoinDesk, Knight was the Chief Reporter at Coin Rivet for three years. Having graduated with a journalism degree from Birmingham City University, Knight went on to work at various sports publications before diving into the world of Bitcoin in 2014. He does not have any crypto holdings.