Puffer Finance Partners with Anchorage Digital to Deliver Ethereum Restaking for Institutions
Through this partnership, institutional investors can deposit their Ether with Anchorage custody services and obtain Puffer's liquid restaking tokens, generating both staking and restaking yields.
Puffer Finance has been integrated into Anchorage Digital's platform, enabling institutional investors to access Ethereum liquid restaking services through the custody provider.
Based on the announcement made Thursday, institutional clients can now stake their Ether held in Anchorage custody and obtain pufETH, Puffer's liquid restaking token, which is deposited directly into their accounts. This token serves as proof of a restaked ETH position and maintains transferability or can be utilized across compatible onchain applications while simultaneously generating staking and restaking yields.
Platform users at the institutional level can now engage in restaking activities without the burden of operating validators or handling staking infrastructure on their own.
The partnership enables institutional clients to tap into Puffer's restaking protocol while maintaining their assets under Anchorage's custody and governance structure, eliminating the necessity to transfer funds between different platforms.
According to Anchorage, this integration represents one component of a larger initiative to broaden institutional participation in onchain services via its platform, encompassing staking, restaking, governance and settlement capabilities.
Based in San Francisco, Anchorage Digital is a cryptocurrency custody provider that holds the distinction of being the first federally chartered crypto bank in the United States.
Reports from January indicated the company was pursuing new funding in the range of $200 million to $400 million while considering a potential initial public offering that could take place sometime next year.
Liquid restaking expands across Ethereum ecosystem
Within proof-of-stake networks like Ether, restaking has developed as an innovative activity layer, enabling tokens that are already staked to be deployed again to provide security for additional decentralized services while earning supplementary rewards.
Within liquid restaking frameworks, staked Ether receives representation through a tradable token that gains the ability to be deployed via restaking protocols for securing additional decentralized services.
EigenLayer, a protocol developed by Eigen Labs, has become the foundation for much of the restaking ecosystem's development, providing functionality that allows staked Ether or liquid staking tokens to provide security for additional onchain services that extend beyond the Ethereum network.
Throughout recent years, liquid restaking has evolved into a sector worth multiple billions of dollars within the broader Ethereum ecosystem. Data from DefiLlama indicates that protocols providing liquid restaking services collectively maintain approximately $7.2 billion in total value locked (TVL).
Leading the sector is ether.fi with approximately $5.6 billion in TVL, with Kelp DAO holding second position at about $1 billion and Renzo capturing roughly $217 million. Puffer Finance, which Anchorage Digital has now integrated, currently oversees around $62 million in restaked Ether.
Companies maintaining Ethereum treasuries are also showing growing interest in these approaches to produce yield from their Ether reserves. SharpLink Gaming announced in October its intention to allocate $200 million worth of Ether from its corporate treasury into staking and restaking strategies utilizing ether.fi and EigenCloud on Linea.