📝 Editor's Note:

Welcome to OurNetwork's latest issue. Below, we're covering restaking, a sector of the crypto economy focused on reusing the security of staked assets to secure other projects and protocols.

A major shoutout to Hayden Tsutsui, the Symbiotic team, Reza, and Yasmin for submitting. Let's get into it.

– ON Editorial Team

Jito | Symbiotic | Swell | Suzaku

• TipRouter is a network on the restaking protocol, built by Jito Network. It decentralizes Jito tip and block reward distributions on Solana via a network of 12 operators and 9 vaults. Users stake JitoSOL and JTO to vaults, and vaults delegate stake to operators. There is about $200M in staked TVL. Operators calculate Jito tip and block reward distributions and vote on the outcome. For contributing to consensus, operators and their stake delegators earn a portion of the rewards.

• Stakers (vaults) and operators in the network have earned about $1M in rewards since inception (February), which generates a reward rate of about 0.36% and 6% on staked JitoSOL and JTO, respectively.

• Jito DAO is the primary beneficiary of TipRouter flows. Jito DAO now earns 5.7% of all Jito tips on Solana, up from 2.7% after redirecting the 3% Jito Labs fee. The current 30-day annualized DAO revenue is sitting at $21.3M. TipRouter fees represent roughly 45% of the total.

• Restaking is the idea of recollateralizing assets across multiple use cases. To maximize points, the peer-to-peer-managed vault (visualized below) increased delegated stake while keeping TVL constant, pushing restaking ratio higher. This ratio shows how many times each dollar is reused and serves as a proxy for leverage. After the points v2.1 update, the vault reduced delegation (green) to lower its ratio and avoid penalties.

• In contrast, MEV Capital’s restaked ETH vault didn’t optimize for points, resulting in an extremely high restaking ratio — each staked dollar was reused over 10x, increasing risk. The chart below shows how easily Symbiotic vaults can adapt their restaking strategies to market conditions or external factors.

• There's an important dynamic — even when the overall restaking ratio decreases, the total amount of assets being restaked can still rise if more TVL flows into the system. This behavior reflects changing risk perception. As the effective risk goes down, new capital is more comfortable entering.

• Swell Network is a protocol offering liquid staking and restaking solutions. TVL hit $782.5M on Sep 16, 2025 (+22.7% year-over-year from $637.7M). The mix has shifted decisively to restaking: LRT composes 85% ($665.1M) of TVL vs 50.6% a year ago. LRT TVL has gained 37.9% while LST is down −46.2%. Q3 2025 average TVL is $687M, up 67% vs Q2—evidence of a restaking-led expansion. This signals a user shift toward restaking yield and reinforces Swell’s LRT-first positioning.

• rswETH is Swell’s liquid restaked ETH. Over the last year it sat below its exchange value more often—and more deeply—than other LRTs: usually −0.2–0.8%, dipping to −1.4% in August 2024. Lately the gap has eased to roughly −0.2%, hinting at a steadier peg.

• swETH DeFi utilization has turned the corner. After sliding from early-2024 highs of around 80% to 50% by late-2024, it rebuilt through 2025 and now steadies around 66–68%. The rebound points to stronger, stickier DeFi demand while still leaving room for liquidity and redemptions.

• Suzaku, an emerging restaking protocol on Avalanche, is showing strong growth momentum. Its total value locked (TVL) has surged by approximately 17% week-over-week, reaching a new all-time high of roughly $10M. This growth is overwhelmingly driven by liquid staked AVAX derivatives like sAVAX ($5.86M) and ggAVAX ($2.13M), which together constitute nearly 79% of total TVL. This highlights Suzaku's strategy of integrating deeply with Avalanche's established liquid staking ecosystem.

• Suzaku shows strong capital stickiness, with $41M in deposits vs $31M withdrawals. sAVAX attracted $29M alone. While over 600 deposits exceed $10k, 72.5% are under $1k, showing broad adoption and trust.

• The protocol has successfully onboarded over 2,250 unique users. User activity is strong, with 727 active users in the last 30 days, nearly one-third of its total user base. Retention is also notable, with cohorts from late 2024 still showing roughly 12 to 14% of users remaining active months later.