Today, we announce our plan to migrate to Optimism.

Over the coming months, 70,000 active cards, 300,000 accounts, and $160M+ in TVL will move to OP Mainnet, marking a long-term partnership between ether.fi and Optimism aligned around a shared vision of accelerating global onchain payments and bringing one of the fastest-growing crypto payments products to the Superchain.

Since launching Cash in September 2024, ether.fi has grown into the largest non-custodial crypto credit card with over $265M in total spend volume. Our users benefit from a suite of integrated DeFi products that let them earn on their crypto and spend it in the real world with ease. As our product ambitions have expanded, we’ve chosen to partner with Optimism to tap into deeper onchain liquidity, a mature DeFi ecosystem, and native stablecoin support that will unlock the next generation of features for our users.

The migration to Optimism is driven by our commitment to delivering the best possible experience for Cash users. The advantages of moving to OP Mainnet enable ether.fi to build a seamless payments experience that makes using crypto in everyday life effortless. This partnership also means enhanced cashback rewards in the assets our users want, like USDC, ETH, and BTC. We’ll share more details on this soon.

Our users’ account safety and a smooth transition will be our top priorities throughout this migration. Optimism has a proven track record of facilitating high-profile integrations, including World Coin, Coinbase’s Base, and Uniswap. Our close collaboration with the Optimism team will ensure that ether.fi users will experience minimal disruption throughout the process. Until then, ether.fi users can continue to use our products as usual.

This partnership is just the beginning. Moving to Optimism unlocks a new design space for ether.fi to build products that weren’t possible before. We’ll be sharing more about what’s coming in the months ahead. In the meantime, follow us on X (Twitter) and join our Discord to stay updated on the migration timeline and upcoming announcements.

Thanks to our stellar frontend engineer Aleks Hirsch for writing this article to highlight some of the awesome projects we are working on here at ether.fi

Interested in joining us? Apply Here!

Onboarding to a Web3 site has become a familiar ritual:

You visit site.com, and get swept up in the DeFi dream. You click “Connect Wallet” or “Stake” in the top right. Suddenly, a new tab “app.site.com” opens. That’s the dApp (decentralized application) where you’ll interface with blockchain protocols.

Fast forward a few apps. Maybe you’ve added cash.site.com to the mix and now you’re juggling three tabs, each with a different purpose. It’s easy to forget what lives where. And let’s be honest, with 30 other tabs open, who can blame you?

Our site worked the same way, and it turned into a fragmented nightmare for our users. When you’re dealing with real crypto assets, you don’t want to lose track of which tab does what. As we move toward our goal of a user-friendly platform that offers the benefits of DeFi without the complexities, solving this fragmentation isn’t just a UX improvement; it’s a necessity.

What’s the solution?

We saw this challenge as an opportunity to introduce micro frontends to streamline our user-facing platforms.

Micro frontends are a popular architectural pattern in web development where independent frontends are composed as part of a greater whole. We can track the introduction of micro frontends all the way back to the end of 2016 when it first landed on the ThoughtWorks Technology Radar.

While micro frontends have been around for almost a decade, tooling in the web ecosystem often takes time to mature and catch up. You could DIY your own implementation in the meantime, but that demands engineering resources to design, build, test, iterate, and maintain. Over time, that can become a headache of its own.

We rely heavily on the Next.js React framework because it enables us to ship quickly with sane defaults, automatically configured lower-level tools like bundlers and compilers, and well-established patterns and documentation familiar to today’s frontend engineers.

Next.js introduced multi-zones originally as one of its approaches to implementing the micro frontends pattern, but some initial experimentation highlighted pain points. A brief discussion with the Vercel team revealed that they were actively working on a new micro frontend solution that would serve as a more convenient wrapper around multi-zones in Next.js and we were invited to opt-in as beta users.

Vercel Microfrontends enabled us to:

• Keep our current Next.js apps intact with minimal changes necessary
• Maintain each app independently
• Show users one consistent interface with one domain as the entry point

How a user would previously access our different apps:

After the micro frontends:

Show me the code

When structuring your micro frontends, you’ll need to identify a default application that will serve as the root application, and within that app set up the microfrontends.json which is a lightweight configuration to control routing within all the applications that make up the final frontend the user interacts with.

For reference, this is what our config looks like:

json
{
  "$schema": "https://openapi.vercel.sh/microfrontends.json",
  "applications": {
    "main-website": { // the name of the app in Vercel
      // no routing means this is the default app
      "development": {
        "fallback": "https://ether.fi"
      }
    },
    "cash": {
      "routing": [
        {
          // a very simple regex to match all paths under /app/cash
          // this way we route paths like /app/cash/safe, /app/cash/transactions etc.
          "paths": ["/app/cash", "/app/cash/:path*"]
        }
      ]
    },
    "dapp": {
      "routing": [
        {
          // if the path starts with app, but is not followed by cash, we route it to the dapp
          // this way we route paths like /app/weeth, /app/liquid etc.
          "paths": ["/app/:path((?!cash).*)/:path*"]
        }
      ]
    }
  },
}


You’ll need to update your next.config.ts to use the `withMicrofrontends(nextConfig)` wrapper, which will look something like this:

typescript
import type { NextConfig } from 'next';
import { withMicrofrontends } from '@vercel/microfrontends/next/config';
 
const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
  /* config options here */
};
 
export default withMicrofrontends(nextConfig);

You might need to make some final tweaks in the config to enable all JS, CSS and image assets to resolve correctly and a local proxy for a better DX while doing local development, although it should be a trivial part of the overall configuration. For in depth instructions, the best place to reference is ultimately the Microfrontends Quickstart in Vercel docs.

Won’t this take forever?

We built the first working version in four days! No big rewrite or six month roadmap, just jumped in and iterated a few times until most of the new routing worked as expected.

Bringing this to production meant solving a few more issues:

• Microfrontends.json regex validation logic (patched by Vercel team)
• Fixing image rendering by updating to a wrapper component, since deprecated
• CI/CD needed new orchestration logic for multiple apps
• TypeScript errors and linting issues
• A weird caching bug, the best kind of bug 🧌(patched by Vercel team)

We had the privilege to interface directly with the engineering team at Vercel, shoutout to Mark Knichel & Kit Foster for real time assistance & landing fixes really fast!

If you or your team would like to attempt a similar change, we recommend incremental migration while doing so, a big bang rewrite is not necessary, we only had to unify our navbar between different apps to ensure a more seamless experience, more on that in the screenshots below.

The highlighted area that is shared from the perspective of the user, between both the cash and previous application that allows you to navigate between different sections of the application without opening new subdomains in different tabs, but rather everything in the same tab and — by introducing speculative loads to prefetch HTML and JS — to seamlessly access your vault for the new cash product and also your portfolio in the old dapp, with minimal code changes required.

In the end, that four-day experiment turned into a production-ready system in a matter of weeks — not months. You can still see remnants of our old purple theme as we didn’t have the time in this iteration to rewrite & rebrand that, but continue reading in “What’s next” for more on that.

Did everything go smoothly?

Definitely not.

We spent a few late nights tracing Next.js routing logic, swapping debug logs with the Vercel folks in real time but that was part of the fun! After all these changes we have a more robust foundation and architecture, in the coming weeks we can unify more parts of the codebase and rewrite some slices of the applications incrementally!

What’s next?

This is only the beginning of improving the user experience for current and future users of ether.fi. We’re now laying the groundwork for a new standard in Web3 user experience. We invite ambitious front-end and full-stack engineers to join us in this journey.

👉 Apply here 👈 No previous blockchain or crypto experience required, just keen software engineers!

At ether.fi, we’ve always been focused on helping you save, grow, and spend your crypto in ways that matter. Today, we’re excited to bring that mission into the real world — through your next hotel stay.

Introducing ether.fi Hotels: a crypto-powered hotel booking platform that gives all Club members access to deeply discounted rates at over 1 million luxury hotels and resorts worldwide. It’s fast. It’s secure. And it’s seamlessly integrated with your ether.fi app.

When you pay with your Cash card, you’ll earn 5% cashback on all bookings through ether.fi Hotels. Just real-world savings — powered by crypto.

The future of DeFi comes with room service

Built in partnership with Entravel, the world’s largest crypto-native travel platform, ether.fi Hotels turns your crypto into five-star experiences. Whether you’re booking a spontaneous getaway or planning a business trip, you’ll find:

• 🏨 Access to 1M+ premium properties worldwide
• 💰 Up to 60% off standard booking prices
• 💳 5% cashback when you pay with your ether.fi Visa Card
• 👥 Exclusive to Club members
• 📱 Booking directly through the ether.fi app

A few deals you can book right now

• Travel smarter: Save on 5-star hotels in Bangkok, London, Vegas, and more
• Same hotels. Same dates. Thousands less. Welcome to crypto-powered travel
• From Vegas to London, premium stays now cost less when you book with ether.fi

Why this matters

For years, crypto has lived in a walled garden — staking, swapping, speculating. ether.fi Hotels breaks that wall down. It’s a step toward making DeFi not just a financial alternative, but a lifestyle upgrade.

As Mathias Lundoe Nielsen, CEO of Entravel, puts it:

“This integration exemplifies how digital assets can be seamlessly integrated into real-world applications, providing users with both value and convenience.”

We couldn’t agree more.

How to access ether.fi Hotels:

1. Open the ether.fi app and sign up for The Club membership
2. Tap Hotels in your app menu
3. Browse and book directly from the Hotels page
4. Pay with your ether.fi Cash credit card for 5% cashback

DeFi shouldn’t end when you close your laptop. With ether.fi Hotels, it doesn’t.

Take your crypto on vacation.

Start booking now →

Book luxury stays with crypto through ether.fi Hotels was originally published in ether.fi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Club referral program is finally here — and it flips the script on typical referral rewards.

Instead of a one-time bonus, you earn cashback every time your friend swipes their card. For an entire year.

Here’s how it works:

• Share your referral link with a friend
• They sign up and start spending with their ether.fi Cash card
• You earn 1% of their card spend for the next 12 months!*

It’s like getting paid every time your friend buys a coffee, books a flight, or pays their bills. They get a sleek crypto-powered credit card. You get recurring rewards.

No else required on your end — just refer and earn.

How to start

1. Sign up for The Club membership at www.ether.fi/app/cash/sign-up
2. Head to your Vault and click Invite Friends: https://www.ether.fi/app/cash/refer
3. Copy your unique referral link
4. Share it with someone who spends like it’s their job

Start referring your (rich) friends now.

*Max cashback of $1k per each individual referral per month.

Limited time offer. Restrictions apply. Not available in all jurisdictions. Digital assets are high risk. Past performance ≠ future results. Void where prohibited.

See full referral terms and conditions https://etherfi.gitbook.io/etherfi/ether.fi-legal/ether.fi-referral-program-terms-and-conditions

Share, Earn, Repeat: Introducing ether.fi’s new referral program was originally published in ether.fi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fundamentals season is coming.

Crypto, and Ethereum specifically, will only be globally relevant if there are hundreds of businesses large enough to be publicly traded companies operating on it. This means billions in exogenous revenue streams derived from real value-creation (not gambling) on-chain. Strong fundamentals (revenue, CAC, customer LTV) from protocols will correlate to strong token prices.

It’s now cliche to point out that the two crypto use cases are speculation and stablecoins. If we want to change this as an industry, we need to focus on doing the hard work of creating projects that have product market fit outside of the crypto power-user niche.

We think ether.fi is one example of a project that can grow to $1B in revenue and beyond. In order to deliver on this we need to create products users love, while continuing with our history of consistent execution.

TLDR to $1B Revenue

• Truly crypto native businesses (read: not CeFi) have substantial structural advantages versus traditional businesses. They can grow faster, have remarkably high operating margins, and develop defensible moats.
• The center of the ether.fi ecosystem will remain the DAO and value accrual will be to $ETHFI. No labs company side quests.
• In FY2024 ether.fi ended with $26M in revenue with a $1.9M operating profit, including the costs of 5% of revenue for $ETHFI buybacks and all token based compensation. This was our first year in business.
• In FY2025 we are forecasting a run-rate of $65–96M in revenue with 30% profit margins, aiming for 25% of revenue buybacks.
• There is a credible path to $1B in revenue, 30–40% profit margins, with low single-digit millions of users, which is achievable in the next 3–4 years.

How Did We Get Here?

Our goal has always been to build a broader platform while maintaining the core tenets of decentralization and protocol sustainability.

Liquid staking was the first product that allowed ether.fi to scale users, TVL, and morph into a trusted brand. eETH has become a blue-chip DeFi asset, being integrated in over 400 DeFi protocols and deployed on 17 chains. The protocol would not be where it is without the many great partners and builders in DeFi. It is trusted by over 200k wallets, made up of both institutions and retail investors.

The user acquisition from our Stake product enabled us to begin executing on our strategy of vertical integration and launch our second product, ether.fi Liquid. Growth has been consistent and stable.

Our next product, ether.fi Cash, officially launches today. This allows ether.fi to enter the final phase of the plan and create a vertically integrated crypto-native banking alternative.

DefiBank

A defibank* is not a bank, in the sense that it is not a deposit taking institution — it is non-custodial and decentralized. It is a credible bank alternative in the sense that it can provide users everything they would get from a traditional bank.

It is a single app interface for users that let’s them save, earn and spend their crypto in real life. The app will extend into other tokenized assets as time progresses. If ether.fi was a bank it would be a top 150 US financial institution by AUM…within 2 years of existence. Our goal is to grow our platform to rival the top 10 financial institutions in scale. What are the advantages of a defibank?

Structurally Lower Costs

Neobanks are able to offer lower fees and better products because of structurally lower costs and ability to move faster**. This model first emerged in 2010s as smartphones became widespread around the world, such that it was possible to offer a fully digital, app-based banking experience.

A defibank — a crypto-native non-custodial bank alternative is able to operate even more cheaply and move faster, while offering better products. There are many reasons for this, but not having to take custody of user assets and being able to rely on the blockchain eliminates a tremendous amount of overhead. As a concrete example, if ether.fi were a traditional bank it would have 200–300 employees rather than 25. End users are the winners here as lower costs are passed on in the form of lower fees and better earnings.

Whole Portfolio Approach

The power of permissionless DeFi composability means it’s possible to create novel products that couldn’t exist before.

A defibank can operate a users entire portfolio. Imagine a single account that holds their assets, investments (DeFi strategies, RWAs and others,) art collection, insurance policy, and other tokenized assets (home, car, etc), and more. The user is able to spend or borrow against the entire value of their asset base.

They can get product offers based on their holistic financial picture and much more comprehensive view of their credit history.

Self Custody

When customers deposit money into a traditional bank or a neobank the bank takes the assets and rehypothecates funds with added risks and investments. The bank gets to keep the proceeds while socializing the risk to its customers, knowing that if things go south they will be bailed out. A crypto native approach offers control and transparency. The user is not asked to take any risks they are not explicitly comfortable with.

ether.fi Product Suite

A single app that allows users to save, earn and spend their crypto. Including:

• Fiat onramp and offramp.
• Deploy assets into stables, ETH, BTC and others.
• Stake, swap, and deploy into DeFi strategies with ease.
• Account abstraction, cross-chain wallet with social recovery.

Stake

The Stake product allows users to stake ETH, BTC, and USD to receive eETH, eBTC and eUSD liquid receipt tokens. These tokens are widely integrated in hundreds of DeFi protocols and many CeFi exchanges.

The goal of the product is to create a ubiquitous suite of liquid staking tokens that provide users with relatively low risk rewards and the ability to participate in DeFi with ease. This is the DeFi analogue of money market deposits, but more easily portable and with lower fees.

Liquid

The Liquid product allows users to put their DeFi strategies on autopilot with a series of non-custodial vaults. The vaults are focused on generating the best risk adjusted rewards on a variety of assets, including ETH, BTC and USD. The near term goal of Liquid is to incorporate RWAs (real-world assets) and other assets to give users a variety of options and minimal tradeoffs versus TradFi alternatives.

Cash

Cash is where crypto meets real-life utility. Users can spend and borrow against their assets, including Liquid vaults and strategies.

Cash includes:

• A credit card.
• Fiat on/off ramp for USD and EUR via SWIFT, ACH, IBAN.
• Ability to spend stables, including yield-baring varieties.
• Ability to borrow at DeFi rates against assets and strategies.
• Non-custodial smart contract safe, with account abstraction, no gas fees, cross-chain deposits and withdrawals.
• No bullshit fees, clear and transparent pricing.

All credit and borrows for Cash will be supplied via an Aave market instance.

ether.fi for Business

The full suite of products, including ether.fi Cash is available for corporate users, including the ability to issue multiple cards to employees with custom limits, policies, and reporting. Our corporate card solution for crypto-native treasuries and businesses allows organizations to spend directly from their wallets without having to bridge between blockchains and banks. Delivering seamless spending where the funds already live is a 10x product improvement over conventional FinTech solutions. Protocols already using our corporate product include EigenLayer, Maelstrom, Curve, LlamaRisk, and more.

Revenue Model

Ether.fi’s revenue model spans three core pillars: Stake, Liquid, and Cash — each designed to serve different user needs while capturing value across the financial stack. Across all segments, retail users looking to receive the full suite of ether.fi benefits will pay an annual membership fee, unlocking access to enhanced features, perks, and rewards within staking, vault products, and Cash. This membership model strengthens user retention and enables monetization across multiple touchpoints in the ecosystem.

Stake

Ether.fi generates staking revenue by capturing a percentage of yield from assets staked through its protocol. This includes native staking rewards, restaking incentives, DVT participation, and RWA yield. Each category contributes differently based on asset type, total value locked (TVL), and yield rates. Based on these figures, we project staking-related activity to generate $26M in revenue in 2025 in the base case.

Liquid

ether.fi generates Liquid revenue primarily through management fees, partner vault arrangements, and other structured yield-sharing agreements. These revenue streams vary by asset type and vault structure, with Liquid products earning materially more per dollar than staking — approximately 2.5–3x more on average. The current Liquid suite spans ETH, BTC, and USD-denominated vaults across multiple chains, with management fees ranging from 1.25% to 2%. Based on these figures, we project liquid-related activity to generate $28M in revenue in 2025.

Cash

ether.fi Cash generates revenue through interchange, foreign exchange (FX), and on-chain financial activity such as swaps and lending. Transaction-based revenue is driven by card usage across both retail and corporate segments. Additional revenue streams include FX margins, in-app swaps, lending spreads through a direct Aave deployment, and commissions on travel bookings. With activity and promotional campaigns ramping up in H2 of 2025, we project $4M in revenue over the the following 8 months, with a significant inflection point in 2026 as product adoption accelerates — setting Ether.fi Cash on track for $60M+ in revenue in year two of operations.

Customer Lifetime Value

We expect customer lifetime value (LTV) to range from $500–$1,000 for retail users and $1,200–$1,800 for corporate clients, based on projected revenue per user/corporate across Ether.fi Cash, Stake, and Liquid. These estimates account for product usage over a multi-year period, factoring in average transaction volume, yield participation, and service fees. We expect to realize increased margins as ether.fi continues to own more layers of the infrastructure stack.

2024 Historical Performance

Total Revenue — $26M

• Staking related revenue — $19.5M
• Liquid Revenue — $6.5M
• Cash — $0.1M (In closed beta)

Projected Performance

Based on the revenue model targets and earnings outlined above, the projected annual run rate for each product by the end of 2025 is shown below.

The following assumptions underpin our targeted EOY run-rate:

Reaching the $1B revenue milestone for ether.fi requires scaling across all 3 flagship product lines, while capitalizing on increasing demand for crypto-native financial infrastructure. Based on current yield models and fee structures, this target would be driven by the following growth benchmarks:

• Stake: ~7M ETH
• Liquid: ~2M ETH
• Cash: Serving 6–8M retail users and 25k corporates clients

These assumptions assume a market environment of ETH at $2k and BTC at $90k, aligning with continued institutional interest and mainstream adoption of on-chain finance. Achieving this would highlight ether.fi’s ability to scale into a vertically integrated crypto-native platform.

TAM and Customer Segmentation

The total addressable market for ether.fi with the integrated offering of Stake, Liquid and Cash, crosses 3 distinct user bases in a phased approach. For the first phase, covering the next 12 months, our core focus is on targeting and serving DeFi-native users — the earliest adopters and most aligned with our product ethos. As we establish traction with this base, we’ll expand to CeFi and Neo-bank users in subsequent phases of growth.

DeFi Natives

In 2025, our primary focus is on serving DeFi-native users and companies — whether they have been debanked by traditional rails or not, we believe the sovereign offering to those with the strongest need for crypto banking alternatives should serve as the north star. We estimate this core market to encompass approximately 1 to 10 million retail users [1] and 3–5k companies [2] globally. Converting our existing power users into Cash users will entrench our offerings on Stake & Liquid, creating an organic funnel into higher margin products. Based on our current distribution, by achieving a small number of onboarding wins of larger depositors (1%), we can reach over 90% of current TVL. Moreover, the DeFi market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.4%, reaching approximately $1T by 2032, allowing for significant scale to be serviced entirely on-chain.

CeFi Customers

The next phase is centered around expansion into the CeFi user segment — a substantially larger group with increasing exposure to crypto but still reliant on traditional banking rails and custodial services. We estimate the TAM in this segment to be approximately 30–50 million users [3]. These individuals often interact with platforms like centralized exchanges, yield products, and stablecoin services, but lack access to user friendly self-custodial financial tools.

CeFi solutions are not without their own flaws, and the recent Bybit hack of 400,000 ETH underscores the importance of empowering users with greater control over their assets while retaining the functionality of a traditional banking experience. Ether.fi is positioned ahead of the trend toward non-custodial solutions, offering a solution that users will trust to a level equal or exceeding that of their bank. This growth segment will greatly expand visibility to the Ether.fi brand through meaningful partnerships, and kick off vertical ownership of payments with in-house card issuing & settlement to boost margins.

Neo-Banking Customers

Phase 3 of ether.fi’s rollout plan targets Neo-bank users — a fast-growing, mobile-native segment seeking digital-first financial services. In 2024, the global NeoBank market size was valued at $143B, with projections hitting $3.406T by 2032 at a 48.9% CAGR [4]. Revenue forecasts are set to grow at a similar rate, moving from $83B in 2023 to 2,048B in 2030 [5]. In 2023 and 2024, leading neo-banks experienced more than 30% growth YoY in retail users and a 40–60% increase in corporate clients onboarded, in certain cases, onboarding as many as 20,000 corporate clients a month [6].

This audience is primed for a product that merges neo-bank UX with DeFi infrastructure — offering real yield, self-custody, and borderless payments. Ether.fi Cash is designed to ride this wave, leveraging the surge in stablecoin settlement volume. Stablecoin settlement experienced over $15.6T in 2024 volume, surpassing Visa in 2024 volume [7]. We will deliver real-time, on-chain financial services that feel familiar but operate natively on crypto rails.

TAM by Region

The map below outlines the targeted regions for expansion. This demand is supported by Neo-bank regional penetration to date, which we view to be closely coupled with CeFi usage.

• European Economic Area (EEA) + EU: 29.93%
• United States: 26.50%
• Asia-Pacific: 23.60%
• South America: 13.58%
• Other regions: 6.39%

Roadmap and Catalysts

Over the coming months ether.fi will be working on a number of major initiatives. Two of the most important ones are The Club membership program and increased $ETHFI token utility

The Club Member Program

The Club membership will provide benefits across ether.fi products. Free for all to join, with unlocked perks and reduced fees as members level up through their account activity. The model being followed is similar to membership programs such as Air Miles and Amazon Prime, which helps create customer loyalty and strong branding. This is particularly important in the context of crypto where communicating with customers and understanding their needs can be challenging. There is no KYC required to become a member of The Club.

The illustrative member tiers and benefits are shown below:

$ETHFI Token Utility

$ETHFI is the value and governance layer of ether.fi. It represents long-term exposure to the protocol’s expanding revenue base across staking, vaults, and defibank services.

Moving forward the $ETHFI token will also play a much more central role within the protocol, including revenue driven buybacks, membership perks tied to staking, and other utility integrations.

Fundamentals: Multi-Product Revenue

• Revenue fundamentals — $ETHFI is the governance and value accrual token across the full stack: Stake, Liquid, Cash.
• Stake: $40M projected 2025 revenue from 3.25M ETH and eBTC/eUSD expansion
• Liquid: High-yield, cross-chain DeFi vaults earning high margins
• Cash: Credit + FX + onchain activity (interchange, swaps, lending)

sETHFI

• Protocol-level buybacks (up to 25% of revenue) provides consistent support
• Buybacks are allocated to directly to sETHFI holders
• Current APY for sETHFI is 16.65%
• sETHFI unlocks early access to products, membership perks, and reward boosts

The chart below illustrates ether.fi’s projected quarterly revenue for 2025 across our three core product lines — Stake, Liquid, and Cash. Based on these revenue projections, a percentage of protocol revenue (aiming for 25%, conditional on profitability) will be used to buy back $ETHFI. The buybacks are directed to sETHFI holders, providing ongoing buy pressure and tangible value for token participants. The figures also reflect both implicit and explicit withdrawal fee revenue accruing directly to ETHFI buybacks.

The below chart represents ether.fi’s 2029 targets and are aligned with the $1B revenue milestones outlined in the projected performance section above. The targets reflect long-term strategic growth assumptions across Stake, Liquid, and Cash, based on scaled adoption, product maturity, and sustained market participation. These projections are illustrative and forward-looking in nature, and actual performance may vary based on protocol evolution, market conditions, and user demand.

Governance at Scale

• $ETHFI holders actively shape the protocol’s direction:
• Protocol upgrades & treasury diversification
• Node operator onboarding and AVS restaking allocations
• Treasury allocation & diversification

Team & Investors

The ether.fi Labs team consists of individuals with backgrounds building Web2 businesses to scale, in combination with deep industry expertise.

ether.fi has over 100 investors including well known names Coinfund, Maelstrom, Bullish, North Island Ventures, Arrington Capital, OKX Ventures, top industry angels, and more.

Disclaimers

• *ether.fi’s DeFiBank services are provided by a financial technology company, not a chartered bank.
• **Unlike traditional banking services, ether.fi operates as a technology platform, not as a regulated financial institution.
• Please note that these figures are forward-looking estimates and actual results may vary due to market conditions and protocol performance. The information presented is for informational purposes only and does not guarantee future outcomes.

Sources:

[1] TokenTerminal https://tokenterminal.com/explorer?v=YjBkZWYwNDFmNDIxYjhkYmQzOTU0NWM3; Nansen https://www.nansen.ai/guides/defi-statistics-in-2022; Statista https://www.statista.com/topics/8444/decentralized-finance-defi/#editorsPicks

[2] Funds / OTC desks — Messari https://messari.io/screener/fund; Company data -DeFiLlama https://defillama.com/; Foundations — CareyOlsen 1,000 Cayman Foundations https://www.careyolsen.com/insights/briefings/legal-500-country-comparative-guide-blockchain-cayman; Prop trading — Opalesque https://www.opalesque.com/

[3] Binance https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/9286136003369; Coinbase https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-reports-sharp-revenue-user-growth-in-q4; Bybit https://learn.bybit.com/crypto-insight/bybit-6th-anniversary/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

[4] GrandviewResearch https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/neobanking-market; FortuneBusinessInsights https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/neobanking-market-109076

[5] SimonKucher https://www.simon-kucher.com/en/insights/neobanking-2023

[6] Revolut https://cdn.revolut.com/pdf/annualreport2023.pdf; Statista https://www.statista.com/statistics/1089588/key-figures-for-monzo-bank-united-kingdom/; Statista https://www.statista.com/statistics/1415308/nubank-customer-growth-quarterly/; Monzo https://monzo.com/annual-report/2024; NuBank https://international.nubank.com.br/company/nu-holdings-ltd-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2024-financial-results/

[7] ArkInvest — https://www.ark-invest.com/big-ideas-2025

Building a $1B Revenue DeFi Protocol was originally published in ether.fi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

ether.fi and Scroll have partnered to make Scroll the settlement layer of real world transactions for ether.fi Cash. ether.fi Cash will offer the highest cash back rewards of any crypto card globally!

Benefits for ether.fi Cash Users

1. Up to 8% Cash Back: As a token of appreciation to our loyal community — Pepes, Wojaks, Chads, and Whales — we are offering 3% Cash Back on all ether.fi Cash transactions, with no exceptions or restrictions. For those who pre-order ether.fi Cash, we are offering an additional $50 Cash Back on the first $1,000, providing an effective rate of 8% CASH BACK. Pre-orders will end September 20, 2024. Pre-order at https://app.ether.fi/cash

2. Credit Card, not a Debit Card: Unlike pre-loaded debit cards others offer, Cash is an actual credit card. You’ll have a physical credit card that will integrate into mobile payments providers, including Apple pay. Unlike pre-paid debit cards, your Cash card works for travel bookings, car rentals and anywhere else credit cards are accepted.

3. Free Ticket to Token2049 for Chad and Whale Cardholders: As a special bonus, Chad and Whale cardholders as of September 15 will receive a complimentary conference pass to Token2049 in Singapore. 👀

Why Scroll was Chosen

• Shared Vision: Connecting crypto to actual real-world use cases means building a more accessible and scalable ecosystem. Scroll’s design aligns with an ongoing commitment to scale Ethereum’s capabilities.
• Focus on Efficiency: Scroll’s zk-Rollup technology drastically reduces gas fees, enabling ether.fi to offer gasless transactions for Cash cardholders.
• Lending and Borrowing Market: This partnership will also enable us to introduce an efficient and secure lending and borrowing market for ether.fi Cash. Unlike pre-loaded debit cards others offer, Cash is a genuine credit card–you’ll be able to use your crypto as collateral, borrow against it to make purchases with your card, and automatically pay the balance off with native yields. Whether it’s a coffee, a hotel stay, or a flight, you can hold onto your crypto while leveraging it to do more than ever before.

The Future of ether.fi Cash

Our decision to build on Scroll as the settlement solution for ether.fi Cash transactions is a substantial milestone in our journey. Through this collaboration we are able to offer our users a faster, cheaper, and more rewarding onchain meets real-world experience. Whether you’re a seasoned crypto degen or new to the space, ether.fi Cash is designed to meet your needs and exceed your expectations. A detailed technical write-up will be published soon, outlining how ether.fi Cash transactions will be processed on Scroll, the role of zk-Rollups in enhancing scalability, and the integration of LayerZero for cross-chain interoperability.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to build and innovate within the ether.fi ecosystem.

Together with Scroll, we are fusing onchain activities and real-world crypto usage; making Web3 more accessible and rewarding for everyone.

Read more about ether.fi Cash in our docs: https://etherfi.gitbook.io/etherfi/cash

ether.fi Cash and Scroll Announce Partnership — 8% Cash Back was originally published in ether.fi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

ether.fi Cash is a Credit Card unlike any other. It’s a new way to off-ramp your crypto. It’s a new way to borrow against your crypto. It’s a new way to spend.

In this post we will go over all aspects of what makes ether.fi Cash unique and why we love it and think you will too.

The Background

The last few years have seen crypto innovation at its best. From decentralized exchanges, to lending protocols and much more. You can do all sorts of things that have been traditionally kept within financial institutions and larger traders and pre-80s software. DeFi is empowering, yet still not the most user-friendly to navigate. One major pain point for any crypto native person was the crypto to fiat off-ramp.

Traditionally, crypto people off-ramp their crypto assets by depositing to a centralized exchange and connecting their fiat bank account. After withdrawing to their fiat bank account, they spend using debit cards or bank transfers.

This puts a lot of trust in the centralized exchange. Why all the burden of using DeFi if you end up having to go through a centralized entity anyways?

This is where ether.fi Cash comes in.

The Concept

ether.fi Cash is a credit card. Unlike crypto-based credit cards, you don’t top it up with fiat funds. Unlike traditional credit & debit cards you don’t top it up or pay it back with slow bank transfers. Here’s how it works with Cash:

1. Hold crypto assets a Cash account (a Gnosis Safe completely under your control)
2. When you use your Cash card, funds are taken from your Gnosis Safe.
   No gas or off-ramp fees, and without you having to wait 3–5 business days for your off-ramped funds to arrive before being able to spend them

ether.fi is now your full stack financial platform in pure Crypto.

With ether.fi, you can save with Stake, you invest with Liquid, and you can now spend with Cash. All that without ever leaving Crypto for any fiat rails.

All of that plus on-chain card management like spending limits adjustments (per transaction, day, month), card freezing and more.

Did we mention it works with Apple Pay and Google Pay?

The Borrowing

ether.fi Cash also makes it easy to borrow against your eETH and Liquid positions on the fly.

Imagine holding 10 eETH and wanting to buy a new iPhone. With ether.fi Cash, you just deposit your 10 eETH into your Cash account, set your Borrowing preferences and go and buy your iPhone.

How does this work?

• Your 10 eETH is turned into a position
• You automatically borrow against this position the amount of your transaction (say 1200 USDC for the iPhone)
• Simply pay for the phone as you normally would! A lending position is opened and the payment is settled within the blink of an eye.

And all of that gas-less.

The Gnosis Safe

We mentioned that you hold your ether.fi Cash assets in a Gnosis Safe. But what does this mean?

Traditionally, crypto credit/debit cards always had custody of your funds at least shortly before you go to make a transaction. You had to manually convert your crypto to fiat or move funds to a non-custodial wallet for transactions to go through.

With the ether.fi Credit Card, your funds will remain in a Gnosis Safe with you being under full control of your crypto at all times. You can set spending limits for your card on-chain, and only that amount will be available for the card to spend.

This is the only pure non-custodial solution to a crypto-to-fiat bridge.

The Perks

All of our credit card tiers will allow you to collect Cash Points as you use your card, redeemable for USDC, VIP crypto conference tickets and other great services.

We also offer:

• Great interest rates on borrowing
• Premium concierge services for higher tier cards
• High quality metal cards
• Lounge access, private parties and more!
• Crypto conference passes
• Low FX rates

You can even collect Cash Points during special crypto events by just using your ether.fi card.

The Recap

• Traditional credit cards don’t work with crypto
• Most crypto credit cards in the wild right now tend to be custodial solutions with subpar conversion and fx rates, with very few perks
• The ether.fi Cash credit card will make spending crypto a breeze. You’ll be able to spend USDC directly or borrow against yield bearing assets that pay themselves off while you spend

The Cash team will be at Token2049 in Singapore (September 2024)

Join us there and maybe you’ll get something special!

Follow us on X @ether_fi

ether.fi Cash was originally published in ether.fi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

TL;DR

• ether.fi Cash is a mobile wallet + Visa credit card.
• Spending money using the card either borrows USDC against your ether.fi assets or swaps them into USDC for instant settlement — your choice!
• The card pays off itself using your Stake and Liquid rewards if you like!
• You will be able to use the card anywhere in the world.
• Sign up now to get 1000 ether.fi Cash points and get on the waitlist.

Cash is the third in our Trilogy of products — ether.fi Stake, ether.fi Liquid, and ether.fi Cash. Combined these integrated products help users save, invest and spend their crypto, making it so that users never have to offramp again.

Our mission is to make DeFi accessible and easy for normal people. Why are we doing this? Let’s start with a quick history lesson.

A brief history of the world:

In the beginning people could store their wealth by holding seashells or precious metals. If someone wanted to take another person’s metals they’d need to club them over the head. Clubbing people was a lot of work and seashells were easy to hide, so this wealth storage system worked pretty well.

Then governments were formed with organized club wielders who would go around clubbing people (or threatening to club them) to grab their precious metals and put them in big central coffers.

Then America was founded where the people could have their own clubs (or guns) and prevent the government from taking their stuff (or at least make it awkward.)

Then America sneakily replaced everyones gold with paper, and spent all the gold on endless wars and stimmy checks. They called this MMT and inexplicably no one seemed to notice, and many people actually thought this was good.

So now there was no need for clubbing or awkward threats because the government could just spend everyone’s wealth without permission.

This wasn’t great so Satoshi invented Bitcorns which let people hold their wealth in flash drives and again made it hard to take people’s stuff.

Finally, Vitalik came up with Ethereum which let people make programmable Bitcorns so that people could lever up 100x and earn points and do some other things. This was called DeFi.

DeFi Today

DeFi today is a collection of ultra narrow products that are designed for hyper financial degens who want to build their own strategies and complex derivatives.

This is similar to the early days of personal computing when the default was that people would assemble their own machine by picking out the motherboard, CPU, sound card etc. This was fun for many of the early adopters but not really appropriate for normal people.

Just like DeFi today is totally inscrutable to the average person.

The Future

Giving people control over their wealth is a core part of our mission. We want to make it easy to navigate DeFi while giving users all the benefits of crypto:

• Self-custody
• Transparency
• Censorship resistance

Over time protocols are going to need to provide a suite of integrated products and abstract away the complexities of DeFi including chains, derivatives, and strategies. They are going to resemble consumer products that focus on bringing value to the user.

For ether.fi staking was just the beginning and now with the launch of Liquid and Cash we’re closer than ever to our end state vision. That being said there is much more that needs to be done.

Reliance on TradFi payment rails is still a major censorship risk and a usability nightmare. Reliance on USD as the unit of account chains crypto to a perpetually inflating shitcoin minted by the Federal Reserve.

Both of these issues are going to need to be addressed over the coming years and they form a big part of our roadmap in the next leg of our journey.

Get ready for ether.fi, normies.

Introducing ether.fi Cash was originally published in ether.fi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Quick Hits

• 6% airdrop in Season 1
• 5% airdrop in Season 2
• Starting March 18 at 8a EST, users will have 90 days to claim their ETHFI at claim.ether.fi
• Hold on to ETHFI to improve your StakeRank
• Stay tuned for the DAO’s first prospective proposal: Token Value Accrual

Announcement

The ether.fi Foundation is thrilled to announce the launch of the ETHFI token, signaling the next major step in decentralization of the ether.fi protocol. As the first noncustodial, delegated staking protocol, ether.fi is the leader in liquid restaking tokens, with wide adoption throughout the Ethereum ecosystem.

The ETHFI token launch empowers ether.fi’s growing ecosystem to participate in governance and chart the path forward for the protocol.

Ether.fi has already achieved 800k+ ETH in TVL, and has over 250k wallets currently staking ETH on the protocol. eETH, a rebasing ERC-20 liquid staking token, is the primary product of ether.fi. Holding eETH allows users to gain native ETH staking rewards, ether.fi points, and EigenLayer points, all while being able to participate and earn additional rewards in other DeFi protocols on Ethereum and compatible L2s.

As a portion of protocol and re-staking rewards are directed toward the DAO treasury, the ETHFI token now plays a vital role in controlling and governing this treasury, and the future of the protocol at large.

If you are new to ether.fi, you can learn more about the protocol at the following links:

• ether.fi protocol
• Docs
• Discord
• Twitter
• Dune Dashboard
• Blog

The Token & Airdrop

The ETHFI token has been fully minted with a fixed supply of 1 billion. There will be no further issuance. Some key details below:

• Token Name: ether.fi (ETHFI)
• Max Token Supply: 1,000,000,000 ETHFI
• Initial Circulating Supply: 115,200,000 ETHFI (11.52% of max token supply)
• Users can view their eligbibility now at claim.ether.fi

Season 1 of the ETHFI airdrop consists of 6% total of the full token supply with the initial distribution opening on March 18. Users will have 90 days to claim their ETHFI at claim.ether.fi. Any unclaimed ETHFI tokens will be added to the Season 2 airdrop.

The eligibility for the ETHFI token airdrop has been determined by a user’s contribution to the ether.fi development and growth over time, including stakers and ether.fan holders who have been with us on the journey from the start. Whale wallets will have a 3 month vest for their tokens, everyone else can claim them instantly.

The following criteria was used to determine eligibility:

• You were part of the Early Adopter Program
• You are a holder of an Ether.Fan NFT
• You are a solo staker
• You are a holder of eETH or weETH
• You hold a position in a participating eETH or weETH DeFi pool or vault
• You unlocked one or more ether.fi badges
• You referred one or more friends to ether.fi

The airdrop is backwards-looking and the snapshot for eligible activity was taken on 03–15–2024 0:01 UTC, marking the end of Season 1 and the start of Season 2.

The Season 2 airdrop will be 5% of token supply. Dates of Season 2 are March 15 -> ???

Tokenomics

The breakdown of token allocation are below:

The allocations aim to promote long term, deep engagement in key governance decisions toward the continued success of the ether.fi protocol. This decentralization process ensures that ether.fi will be governed and stewarded by a committed group of contributors, collaborating to ensure that ether.fi is appropriately resourced to achieve its mission and goals for many years to come.

All tokens will be distributed by the end of 2030.

If you’re looking to dive deeper into the Tokenomics, please read our docs — https://etherfi.gitbook.io/etherfi/governance

Utility of ETHFI

The governance token ETHFI gives community members a direct mechanism to contribute to the protocol and influence the growth of the ether.fi ecosystem. ETHFI token holders will have the opportunity to meaningfully participate in key decisions, such as:

• The ether.fi Grants Program, which will launch to support the long term growth of the ecosystem
• Protocol longevity, vision, and key economic parameters, such as protocol fees, controller, contract and various other protocol upgrades
• Software developer contributor permissions and greenlighting of node operators that run ETH nodes on behalf of the protocol
• Token staking, to earn additional incentives by providing permissionless staking services (such as running an Ethereum node)
• Treasury diversification activities

Stay tuned for the DAO’s first prospective proposal: Token Value Accrual

In addition to governance, ETHFI will be value accruing and you can hold on to ETHFI to improve your StakeRank, more on this soon.

The ether.fi Foundation

The ether.fi Foundation exists to oversee and carry out the decisions of the token holders, and to steward the treasury and protocol.

The Foundation will be accountable, and will provide regular transparency reports, to token holders. The ether.fi Foundation will be governed by its constitutional documents, which will be shared in a subsequent post.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please be alert for scams around token claims, including fake links and accounts impersonating Ether.fi. There is no public sale of ETHFI tokens. Make sure to follow the information in our official channels only that are listed on ether.fi. For more information, please refer to our terms and conditions. Note persons from the US or sanctioned jurisdictions or other excluded are not eligible to claim.

Throughout the ether.fi journey, we have always strived to over-deliver for our users.

We started our journey as a next-gen liquid staking protocol, but that is not where our ultimate ambition ends.

Our long term goal is to help onboard the next billion users onto crypto. We want to make DeFi easy, safe and transparent for normal people.

To that end, we’re now excited to share the next step of our journey. On March 18th we will be launching of our next product: Liquid.

Staking is an important part of the DeFi ecosystem

Currently, staking is by far the largest category in DeFi by TVL. It serves as the base for a lot of DeFi, from lending to trading to RWAs.

However we need crypto to be more than just a self-referential casino. We need to make it easy for people to transact in crypto– to save in crypto, to earn their income in crypto, to spend crypto in the real world. That’s the long term vision for ether.fi–to help onboard the next billion users onto native crypto rails.

To this end, over the next 12–24 months our vision is a suite of 3 integrated products: Stake, Liquid, and Cash.

Stake

Our first product is ether.fi Stake — the first liquid native restaking solution, which made it easy for users to restake their ETH on EigenLayer.

We believe that restaking and staking aren’t actually two separate categories. Restaking is simply the next generation of staking.

Asymptotically, native ETH staking yield will come down to 1.5–1.8%. The reason for this is that as more ETH is staked and as low cost DA solutions come online block space will becomes cheaper, and staking yield will be spread over a larger amount of staked ETH.

So over the long term most ETH will be staked, and most of the rewards come from restaking. This means that restaking will become table stakes for all liquid staking solutions.

Liquid

The next product, which is launching on March 18th, is ether.fi Liquid — a managed DeFi strategy vault that deploys users’ ETH, eETH or weETH into DeFi to earn the highest quality rewards with managed risk.

The Liquid product will have a series of strategy vaults that are non-custodial, where users can withdraw at any time, and have complete transparency at all times with respect to how their assets are deployed.

Cash

Finally, over the next 12 months we will be deploying ether.fi Cash — a real-life spending account that will allow users to spend and borrow against their ether.fi balance in the real world. This will include a mobile app MPC wallet that connects to users’ ether.fi account, and a credit card that users can load with their ether.fi balance.

To support this, our plan is to create a payments L2 with built-in handling for payment disputes and many other features that are table-stakes for consumers when it comes to payments.

Cash is still in the very earliest stages of development and will continue to evolve over the coming months.

The product suite

The three products, Staking, Liquid, and Cash, allow users to hold, deploy and spend their crypto. Ultimate utility, that is Incredibly easy to use and completely transparent.

Through all this, ether.fi will operated as a decentralized system under DAO governance. This represents a major shift in the development of financial services, and shifts in the power dynamic away from rent-seeing institutions in favor or users.

Staking is Just the Beginning was originally published in ether.fi on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.