Liquid restaking and $bLiToken

What is restaking?

Restaking is a new crypto-economic primitive that enables the reuse of staked consensus assets on a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain, for example, staked ETH on Ethereum. First introduced by EigenLayer, restaking is beginning to be used to extend existing security to applications and networks external to the base layer PoS blockchain without relying on a new and more risky asset, essentially increasing both return and risk to the stakeholders who restake their consensus assets.

What is liquid restaking?

Liquid restaking follows the same general procedure as liquid staking and involves tokenizing the staked ETH into a liquid restaking token (LRT) that retains the value of the original staked ETH while allowing it to be used across various DeFi applications. Essentially, liquid restaking decouples the staking rewards from the operational constraints of traditional staking, providing stakers with greater flexibility, improved capital efficiency, and enhanced reward opportunities.

What are Actively Validated Services (AVS)?

Actively Validated Services refer to any systems that require their own distributed validation semantics for verification, such as sidechains, data availability layers, new virtual machines, keeper networks, oracle networks, bridges, threshold cryptography schemes, and trusted execution environments.

What are Operators?

Operators are specialized entities (individuals or organizations) that opt to provide a range of services, including running validators, to AVS, enhancing the security and overall reliability of their networks. An Operator can choose to provide node validation services for 1 AVS or a combination of multiple AVSs.