Restaking pledges your staked ETH as security for additional services, each with its own slashing conditions. The extra yield is real and so is the extra way to lose principal, and most protocols in this category are vague about the second half. ether.fi is not, which is why it leads the category despite the sector's unresolved economics.
Withdrawal credentials stay with you
In most liquid staking and restaking designs the protocol controls withdrawal credentials, so exiting depends on it functioning. ether.fi lets stakers retain them, which means the worst-case scenario — protocol failure — still leaves a path to your principal. That is a genuine structural difference and the single most important thing distinguishing it from competitors.
What you are actually earning
Base staking yield, plus restaking rewards from services securing themselves with your collateral, minus the protocol's roughly 10% fee. In practice the restaking component has been a fraction of a percentage point, because far more capital wants to be restaked than services are paying to secure. Judge the trade honestly: a small yield premium in exchange for an additional slashing surface and a younger contract stack.
Liquidity
weETH is the most integrated LRT, accepted as collateral in major lending markets with the deepest secondary depth in the category. That matters more than it sounds — the April 2024 ezETH dislocation showed what happens to an LRT with leverage on top and insufficient exit liquidity.
Who should use it
Holders who want restaking exposure and want the safest available implementation of it. Anyone whose objective is simply staking yield should use a plain LST and skip the additional risk layer entirely.