ether.fi

Deposit ETH with ether.fi and you get eETH, a rebasing token whose balance grows as validator rewards come in. weETH is the same position wrapped so the balance stays fixed and each token instead becomes worth more eETH over time. weETH is the version lending markets and bridges accept, which is why it shows up far more often than eETH (staking docs).

One point the marketing of 2024 blurred: ether.fi's current docs say eETH and weETH carry Ethereum staking rewards only, with no bundled restaking rewards or EigenLayer slashing exposure. Restaking is a separate, optional product. So weETH today is closer to a liquid staking token than to the stacked-risk restaking tokens it was launched alongside.

The APY is whatever Ethereum validators earn minus that 10% cut, and it moves with network activity. Redemption back to ETH goes through the protocol; timing depends on the liquidity buffer and on Ethereum's own validator exit queue, so it can take days when many people leave at once.

The staking contracts have not been exploited. Every incident on record sits at the edges: the domain registrar, a third-party bridge, and a retired helper contract in the Liquid vault product. ether.fi publishes a dated write-up for each in its incident log, which is more than most protocols of its size do.

The April 2026 episode is what people usually mean by "ether.fi exploit". ether.fi was not the target. Kelp's bridge relied on a single LayerZero verifier; ether.fi checked all weETH routes on 20 chains the same evening and found none with that setup. It then pinned a unanimous 4-of-4 verifier set, took bridging-related parameters under its own multisigs and dropped weETH bridging on eight chains, including Scroll, Blast and zkSync, from end of June 2026 (write-up). It also contributed ETH to the DeFi United fund that restored rsETH's backing.

We found no ether.fi incident in March 2026, and no weETH depeg in 2025 beyond ordinary secondary-market spreads. If you used Liquid withdrawals before about 2025, check for an approval to `0xd458…ea07` on revoke.cash and remove it; the September contract has no owner and cannot be switched off.

Cash is a card attached to a self-custodied smart account. You either spend in debit mode from stablecoins in the account, or in credit mode, where the card draws on a loan against deposited weETH or other collateral, so you spend without selling ETH. The account contracts, card settlement and borrowing modules are audited separately from staking, mostly by Certora and Paladin (audit list).

In February 2026 ether.fi moved Cash from Scroll to OP Mainnet: about 300,000 accounts and 70,000 active cards, with the company citing deeper swap liquidity and more assets for top-ups (The Block). US residents can use Cash under separate US cardholder agreements; Canadians cannot use any ether.fi service (terms).

Credit mode is a loan. If weETH falls far enough against what you have spent, the collateral is liquidated, the same as on any lending market.

DefiLlama counted about $5.59 billion in ether.fi products on 27 September 2026, down from a peak near $12.8 billion on 14 August 2025 (DefiLlama). Part of the fall is simply the ETH price; about $346 million now sits on OP Mainnet, mostly Cash.

• Staking: 10% of rewards, split 5% node operators and 5% treasury.
• Liquid vaults: separate strategy vaults run with Veda; the product is closed to US and UK residents.
• Cash: card fees and FX costs are set in the cardholder terms, not the protocol.

• February: Cash migration from Scroll to OP Mainnet under an OP Enterprise deal.
• April 18–23: Kelp rsETH fallout; one-day Liquid vault pause, bridge hardening, DeFi United contribution.
• June: weETH bridging retired on Scroll, Swell, Bera, zkSync, Mode, Blast, Morph and Sonic; Certora reviews the "26Q2" staking upgrade.
• July–August: Borrow moved to a new lending market, reviewed by Certora and Paladin.
• 11 September: legacy AtomicQueue exploit, about $40K of user funds, reimbursement pending.

The docs now open with "ether.fi is the one account for your money", listing card, trading, borrowing and staking. That is a fair description of where the company is heading: a consumer finance app built on a staking token.

Founder and CEO Mike Silagadze co-founded the Canadian edtech company Top Hat, then ran a crypto fund, Gadze Finance, that lost about $5.4 million on FTX in 2022 before he turned to staking (The Logic). ether.fi raised a $5.3 million seed led by North Island Ventures and Chapter One in February 2023 and launched at ETHDenver that March (The Block); a $23 million Series A led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund followed in February 2024.

Users contract with Ether.Fi SEZC in the Cayman Islands. ETHFI holders vote on the governance forum, while day-to-day control of upgrades sits with multisigs whose signers and thresholds are listed in the docs.