What Is Restaking? Explained Simply

What Is Restaking?

Restaking takes already-staked ETH and pledges it again to secure additional services, earning extra yield on the same capital. EigenLayer popularized the idea: new networks and services rent Ethereum's economic security instead of bootstrapping their own, and restakers collect the rent.

How It Actually Works

You restake either natively (pointing your validator's stake) or by depositing an LST into a restaking protocol.
Your stake now backs extra services, each with its own slashing conditions on top of Ethereum's.
Liquid restaking protocols hand you yet another receipt, an LRT, tradable like an LST but with the extra obligations baked in.

Why the Yield Is Higher

Because the risk is higher, in the least mysterious trade in finance. Each additional service adds a way to be slashed, a contract that can fail, and a dependency you probably have not read. Base staking yield plus restaking rewards can look attractive precisely because the stack underneath is doing more jobs with the same collateral.

Risks and Common Mistakes

Stacked slashing. Misbehavior or bugs in any secured service can burn stake that was also your retirement ETH.
Receipt-on-receipt liquidity. LRTs can depeg harder than LSTs in stress because their redemption path is longer.
Points farming. Much restaking demand chases speculative future airdrops. Yield that depends on a token that does not exist yet is a story, not a rate.
Complexity itself. If you cannot explain the full chain of obligations behind your yield, the yield is explaining it to you later.

When It Matters

Advanced ETH holders comfortable auditing several protocols deep, and anyone trying to understand where DeFi's newest yields come from. For most people the honest takeaway is knowing what it is and why the number is bigger. My DeFi page holds the general framework: never put more into a yield stack than you can afford to have stuck or slashed.