Summary:
Proposal to add weETH/WETH on Ethereum to Gauge Controller
References/Useful links:
• Website - https://www.ether.fi/
• Documentation - ether.fi Whitepaper | ether.fi
• Github Page - etherfi-protocol · GitHub
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/ether_fi
Protocol Description:
Ether.Fi is a decentralized, non-custodial liquid staking protocol built on Ethereum, allowing users to stake their ETH and participate in the DeFi ecosystem without losing liquidity. The protocols eETH is a liquid restaking token (weETH is the non-rebasing equivalent), serving as a representation of ETH staked on the Beacon Chain, which rebases daily to reflect the associated staking rewards. Users can deposit ETH into the liquidity pool on Ethereum Mainnet to mint eETH, hold eETH to accrue rewards, and use eETH within DeFi or swap it back to ETH at any time via the liquidity pool. The protocol currently employs a permissioned validator set, however this will transition to permisionless based on the protocol roadmap.
ETH staked through the ether.fi liquidity pool accrues normal Ethereum staking rewards, and will also be natively restaked with EigenLayer. Staking with eETH on ether.fi automatically natively restakes that ETH to EigenLayer and accrues normal staking rewards while allowing users to keep composability on their eETH in other DeFi protocols.
The eETH contract has been live since June 2023, with eETH launching to the open market on November 15th, 2023, and has approx. 1.2M ETH held within it. Being a liquid representation of staked Ethereum, the price of the token is aligned to the price of ETH.
Through these mechanisms, eETH acts as a conduit for individuals to engage in Ethereum’s staking & restaking process with the added liquidity, making it easier for them to enter and exit staking positions while also benefiting from boosted rewards.
Motivation:
Ether.Fi is looking to seed a weETH/wETH stableswap-ng pool on Curve to serve as a primary source of liquidity for weETH. Incentivising a Curve pool will continue to boost the liquidity of the LRT. Higher liquidity ensures that traders and investors can easily enter or exit positions, which is essential for the overall usability and attractiveness of the LRT token within the DeFi ecosystem. To ensure success, ether.fi is committed to growing pool liquidity through bribes and incentives.
Specifications:
- Governance: Currently, the protocol utilises a time-locked multi signature wallet, with the signatories being doxxed ether.fi executives and investors.
- Oracles: The Protocol relies on an oracle for withdrawals and beacon state. The Oracle is based on the hash consensus mechanism and run by the committee members. Initially, the ether.fi team will be the only ones to operate the Oracle nodes, however the protocol grows, it will add more external parties to join the committee.
- Audits: Audit reports for the http://ether.fi/ protocol are found on the GitBook page - Audits | ether.fi. The audits have been carried out by reputable firms such as Certik, Zellic, Nethermind, Omniscia and Solidified to ensure the security of the protocol. An audit competition was also recently completed through Hats Finance.
- Centralization vectors: The centralization vectors primarily relate to the Oracle until it becomes decentralized, in line with the protocol roadmap. The price (staking rewards for rebasing) and the validator management (spinning up new validators and exiting them for liquidation) are also currently centralized for the early stages of the protocol to ensure mobility. As mentioned above, the signatories currently consist of the doxxed executive team and investors.
- Market History: eETH has accumulated approx. 1.2M of ETH staked within the protocol since launching in the middle of November 2023.
Links:
- Pool / Token: 0xdb74dfdd3bb46be8ce6c33dc9d82777bcfc3ded5
- Gauge: 0x053df3e4d0ced9a3bf0494f97e83ce1f13bdc0e2