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📝 Editor’s Note:

Today we’re publishing our 3rd installment of Zoomed-in, an onchain deep dive series from OurNetwork.

Each Zoomed-in issue is authored by one of the marquee contributors from our analyst community. It will feature a deep dive on a single project of their choosing, going deeper than a standard OurNetwork issue. One inspiration for this series was The Players’ Tribune, a sports publication which allows readers to hear directly from professional athletes in their own words. Our hope is that we can create a similar platform to enable the industry’s top onchain analysts to reach a larger audience.

You can sign up to be a contributor here or ping the Editorial Team (TG: @ofernau) to register your interest in authoring zoomed-in coverage. We are always interested in featuring independent analysts looking to make a name for themselves.

Okay let’s zoooooooom in.

Re7 has been providing liquidity in DeFi since 2019 by deploying capital across yield strategies as well as liquid venture investing. As DeFi-native managers, we have focused on providing early liquidity to various DeFi protocols to help grow their ecosystems.

The Networks at a Glance: 

Restaking is the hottest new DeFi primative, attracting around $20 billion in TVL. Symbiotic is a new restaking primitive that allows for flexible assets and strategies. Mellow is a curation layer built on Symbiotic that allows users to get customized exposure with Liquid Restaking Tokens. Together they have gathered over 60k ETH in deposits in under a week. We zoom into the explosive growth in this deep dive.

• Symbiotic launched on June 11th, and already has reached initial deposit caps for all assets with over 40k ETH staked. The largest asset deposited is wstETH from Lido at 70%. Other LSTs (30% of total) are also represented.

• Users can deposit through Mellow to various curator vaults to get a Liquid Restaking Token and additional protocol points. This has been the main avenue for users to restake in Symbiotic, with Mellow having 55% of the deposit share.

• Depositor size ranges from 8k ETH to just under 1 ETH. Mellow vaults are all in the top 5 depositors of Symbiotic, pooling capital from various individual users. Some large whales have deposited as much as 4k ETH directly in Symbiotic, hoping to profit from further restaking points and rewards.

• Mellow launched with 4 curators, each with their own LRT. Each vault has over 4k wstETH staked. When staking to other networks is enabled, each curator will have to choose a strategy, leading to different risk profiles for each LRT. The curator profiles are diverse as well, with some operator teams as well as DeFi names like Steakhouse and Re7 Labs.

• Over time, each curator’s vault will have a different risk profile by delegating to various other networks for shared security. The Re7LRT vault has attracted over $18M since launch. Long term, Re7’s approach to risk rating on networks can set it apart from other vaults for specific operators.

• DeFi protocols often work on power laws, and deposit size is no different. The largest two depositors in Re7LRT have over 800 wstETH staked each. The top 10 holders account for over three-quarters of the vault deposits.

• With an average deposit of 10 ETH from 385 Re7 LRT holders have diversified size. Restaking rewards have promised additional yield for users big and small. While the majority of vault assets come from a small handful of depositors, the long tail of additional suppliers ranges from small 1 ETH positions to over 30 users with more than 10 ETH supplied.

• Restaking on Mellow vaults still has space and users can earn additional Mellow points while waiting on Symbiotic caps to increase.
• Like others, Mellow LRTs are getting integrated in DeFi. This includes a Pendle pool launched on June 20.
• Beyond ETH-based restaking, Mellow will have new vaults launching with different assets so stay tuned.

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Disclaimer: Data and findings are based on the methodologies used by authors and data platforms. This is not meant to be investment advice. We simply aimed to publish publicly available data and commentary for these newly launched protocols.