Renzo, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has successfully raised $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Maven11, with participation from prominent crypto-native funds, including Figment Capital, SevenX, IOSG, and Paper Ventures. The funds will be instrumental in advancing Renzo‘s liquid restaking protocol, which recently went live on EigenLayer. The interest in liquid restaking on EigenLayer has surged, with Renzo attracting over 2,000 users who have collectively deposited $20 million worth of Ethereum (ETH), equivalent to 9,000 ETH, since the protocol’s deployment in late December.
Lucas Kozinski, Founding Contributor at Renzo, expressed enthusiasm about the distinguished investors supporting their vision of democratizing restaking. He stated, “It’s a pleasure to welcome so many distinguished investors who share our vision of making restaking accessible to everyone. With their support we will make Renzo the most reliable on/off ramp for Ethereum restaking, building upon the new capabilities offered by EigenLayer.”
Balder Bomans, Founder and Managing Partner at Maven11, commended Renzo’s commitment to delivering risk-adjusted strategies, saying, “Renzo’s focus on security, risk mitigation and open finance is, in our view, the best way to tackle a liquid and decentralized governance procedure for picking Actively Validated Services (AVS) on Eigenlayer. Renzo delivers risk-adjusted strategies and liquid representations while providing security to restakers.”
Liquid Restaking Innovation
Renzo’s innovative approach employs a combination of smart contracts and operator nodes to provide automated liquid restaking strategies on EigenLayer. This not only simplifies liquidity management but also enables users to participate in Ethereum staking while exploring additional restaking opportunities.
Renzo allows for the restaking of both ETH and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs), which can be utilized as collateral in decentralized finance (DeFi) to earn compounding rewards. The platform operates under a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which oversees operators, AVS restaking strategies, and protocol parameters to ensure decentralization.
Future releases are expected to include support for cross-chain restaking, integration with lending markets, liquidity aggregators, and vault products, with a particular focus on institutional on/off ramps. In addition, Renzo’s liquid restaking platform introduces ezETH, a restaked ETH position that users can mint by depositing LSTs or ETH into the platform’s smart contracts.
This ERC20 token is fully-backed and can be utilized across the DeFi space to generate rewards in ETH, USDC, and Actively Validated Services (AVS) tokens, akin to cbETH and rETH. Overall, Renzo’s liquid restaking protocol on EigenLayer marks a significant stride towards making staking accessible to a broader audience while prioritizing security, decentralization, and innovative strategies in the evolving DeFi landscape.
